


This day all gods die

by seraphim_grace



Category: Doom (2005), Doom (Games), Parasite Eve, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2344538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A star trek/doom/parasite eve crossover where Bones is Reaper, set just after the events of the first movie where they find a ship full of frozen people, but not khan<br/>I had posted this originally but took it down when the second movie came out because it shared some important similarities and it freaked me out. I hate it when that happens, but it was simply the same idea about eugenics etc</p><p>REPOSTED<br/>DISCONTINUED</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Third Children

**Part One**   
**The Third Children**   
**X-32i**

_Humans will learn that by death of their worldly spirit they will be reborn in unity as a stronger community unending._

_Death is only the beginning._

 

**2071, March 15= Tian Xiaon, Former people’s Republic of Asia**

Names were something you had to earn. Of the two hundred children only five had names, the others were known primarily by their numerical designations. They had purpose, she knew that, even if she was vague on her own. They called her Number One and she was, for the most part, separated from the other children. She only knew that her lessons were different, that when the man with the black hair came he had chosen her and she had become Number One, previously she had been X-32i, and the lessons changed.

She was taken out of stellar cartography and given lessons in dance, PT was replaced with pilates designed to give her long limbs and leanness instead of bulk strength.

She was not alone in this preferential treatment, she had two companions, Number Two and Number Three, both of which were blonde, although when the change started there were five. Number Three was Number One’s genetic twin apart from the change in the colour of her hair. Number Five, who had been Number two had broken her nose badly and had been decided that she was unsuitable for whatever task it was that they were given. Number Four had simply failed.

They were taught about art and music and literature, things she could not for any reason fathom the use for. They were soldiers, weren’t they. That was what they were told, they were Augments, created to better serve. they were the Third Children, they would rule the world under the guidance of the Second Children who had scoured the world and removed the worst aspects of humanity.

One thing Number One had learned from all the polemics, they were full of shit, but she knew better than to say so out loud.

She had never seen the sky except in vids or in paintings. They had been given the choice of the art for their small cells, the doors were locked at night for their safety after one of the children had wandered out side and had to be put down for radiation poisoning. The painting she had chosen was of a woman, dark haired like she was, with her hair bound up, she clutched a cloth under her breasts and behind her was a painting of sunflowers in a jar. The woman was sketched in with the paint giving her pale, milky skin a remarkable warmth and texture, but the expression on her face was one of disdain. Her mouth, barely there on the canvas with her face turned in profile, was a wry twist and her eye, with a black iris under black lashes, was full of contempt.

Number One was fascinated by the painting and long after she was meant to meditate and refocus her energies for the next day before sleep she would stare at it, wondering what the woman had thought, what the man had painted her thought. Now she stood in her cell before the full length mirror and tried to recreate the pose, but her skin looked ashen grey and her hair was too straight to fall into the neat curls around the woman’s face. Her breasts hung wrong and her face was too sharp for the woman’s casual disdain.

She told herself that the tears that came were lingering from the chemicals injected into her irises earlier that day to improve her night vision.

“Number One,” X-23i said from the door, he wore a simple flight suit. His head was clean shaven, like most of the pilot potentials with his designation tattooed into the skin above his ear. “You have to come, X-33i failed the augment, they’ve named him.” She pulled her jumpsuit up over her breasts and barefoot went to follow him. It meant only one thing, they were going to put him down for failure, the scientists called it Processing.

X-33i had been her bunk mate for years. He had a soft dry humour that made her feel loved and softened those long nights between augments where the pain was almost unbearable by climbing into her bed and singing some soft song he had learned from one of the guards. “Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,  
List while I woo thee with soft melody; Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng, Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me! Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!”

It was an open secret that most of the scientists were waiting for him to fail.

Perhaps, Number One thought, it’s because I love him. Love was shunned, a thing of breeders. There was politics and there was war and there was empathy, which they were, as Third Children, expected to understand but love was for the weak, the infected, the humans they would build their kingdoms on.

It was not romantic love, but more that deep seated warmth that came from a sibling and a comfort in the night when the augments and mutagens burned and the pain made her want to cry out, knowing it wouldn’t help and would only show her weakness. There was no way she would let X-33i fall prey to what they considered their failure.

The First Children were arrogant. The Second Children were cold. The Third Children cared. These were the ways that their failures would be recorded. And X-33i probably cared most of all.

She ran, her bare feet slapping against the cold stone floor of their underground facility to Dr de Foix’s lab. It was one of the smaller laboratories, but still had that lowered area with it’s metal table hidden by glass where he performed his experiments on those processed children. In his workspace there were tables and cabinets and machines she did not know the use of that whirred and whined and blinked as he leant over his keyboard tapping away furiously.

De Foix himself was a stocky man, he wore reading spectacles to protect his eyes when he worked at the monitor but other than that had no obvious defects. He had thick black hair and eyebrows as wide as caterpillars. His mouth was thin but firm and he had a powerful jaw. None of these things registered with Number One as he was one of the scientists who held power over the life and death of all of the Third Children. She had chosen him simply because he was the easiest to manipulate. Dr Maeda, a tall thin very old oriental man with a scar on his mouth would ignore her as he prepared the drug that would enable processing, and Dr Singer had very little to do with them, she was responsible for managing their hormone levels and as such would have nothing to do with an optical augment gone wrong.

“Dearheart,” he exclaimed seeing her. De Foix had such appellations for all of the children, even those, like her, mostly come to adulthood.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Are they going to process X-33i?”

He turned the screen of his monitor to her. X-33i sat on the end of the bed. His eyes were still puffy from the injection but the reason for his extermination was clear. His eyes had not only shifted colour in reaction to the mutagen, this was not remarkable, but had done so in different ways. He had gone to the testing with dark brown eyes, like cow shit Dr Maeda scoffed, and now one was a bright emerald green, glassy and metallic from the mutagen, and the other a rich henna red.

As a failure it was both spectacular and simple. In her head she could hear him sing, “Beautiful Dreamer, queen of my song” in his soft tremulous voice. She raised her head and stared the scientist in the face. “You have booked him for processing.” She said, there was no question in her voice, only sturdiness and a certain resolve as things made themselves clear. “Am I not Number One?” She continued and thought of the painting of the woman with the sunflowers, her casual disdain for those who looked upon her beauty because she was completely in control. “Am I not the greatest of the augments?” he nodded blankly, waiting for her to continue as her mien set, her carriage became erect and she practically thrust her small breasts at him like the point of a knife. “I was chosen, was I not, to be the Queen of the First of the Second Children.”

De Foix blinked and licked his lips before he nodded, she was not meant to know that. “You did that on remarkably little information.” He said and his eyes lingered on the curve of her neck.

 

Her smile took on that inglorious wry twist of the woman in the painting. “You were chosen, were you not, by the Second Children, in our creation?” He nodded again, his hands twitching in his lap. “Then you are under my thrall, are you not, Dr de Foix.” She made his name on her lips a caress. How had she missed this? She thought to herself, of course de Foix was kinder to the girls, he liked them, he found them sexually attractive. But her attempts at seduction were clumsy and new, it was a minefield, if de Foix touched her she would be found to fail, it had happened before, and she would be lobotomised and given to him as a toy. “As your queen, chosen by the Premier of the SEcond Children,” the dark haired man could not have been anything but, “I demand that you give him to me.”

“What?” de Foix asked.

“X-33i, give him to me. He has failed his augments, he is of no more use to you, but yet I find that in my position I am not given the respect that is my right. I wish a servant, name him if you will, as a male he is genetically neuter am I correct?” he nodded, “then give him to me. You have no use for him in your studies and augments, I wish someone to clean my cell and polish my nails. I see it as an expedient use of resources, don’t you?”

To her surprise de Foix laughed. His entire face shifted to a comedic mask, eyes uplifted and mouth open but other than that it maintained a sort of porcelain perfection. There was no humour in his laughter at all, although it sounded rich and warm, nothing of it showed on his face. “I see the reasoning in your argument, yes,” he said, “however you must remember you are not Queen yet,” he said. “Perhaps I should process x-33i for that simple reason.”

“Is there anything that can be learned from the failure of his augments? Dr Maeda has repeatedly said that he was too weak for any real use. Let him serve me.” She said, “name him, remind everyone of his failure, but surely if he failed, and in such a way that was completely beyond his control,” she tilted her head, amazed at this new power she found within herself. “If an augment fails for purely physical reasons then the failure is not on the part of the subject but rather the scientist who created the subject surely.”

Dr de Foix for the first time looked at her as something other than “dearheart” or “number one,” he looked at her like an enemy. “You are a very clever girl,” he said and it had the hint of a threat, “very well, you can have the boy,” he looked across, through the glass to their shared workspace where they performed the augments and autopsies, “he’s a pretty little thing, isn’t he?” His smile this time, crawled across his face showing too many teeth, “I’ll call him Jezebel,” he didn’t seem to care it was a girl’s name, “after all he is of the tenth batch of embryos,” all of the tenth batch had names that began with J for the tenth letter of the English alphabet. “Jezebel Cain, because he is such a betrayal. I’ll finish up with the tests and send him on to you, and Dearheart,” even now he used that detested nickname but now it filled her with a sense of purpose, “this will of course be discussed amongst us and the second children, do not think that this is a victory. It is entirely possible that both of you might be taken for processing in light of it.”

Number One turned so her hair fell out of it’s make do fastenings falling around her face like shadows. “I do not think so, do you, Dr de Foix. You have said, on numerous occasions that the First children failed for their arrogance, but this was not arrogance. The second children are flawed despite their power for their lack of empathy. These are the fundamental truths of our existence, are they not?” she didn’t wait for him to answer, “so what is this,” she continued, painfully aware of herself as fourteen year old girl standing down a man three times her age who literally had the power of life and death over her, “but an act of mercy.” De Foix stood up and leaned in to her, placed his mouth against his ear and whispered something. She pulled back horrified at what she heard. Then she turned on her bare heel and left the laboratory.

She was halfway down the corridor, around the turn so he could no longer see her before she doubled over, her stomach cramping with stress. She wrapped her arms about her middle and took deep breaths, taking in as much air as her lungs could hold. Then after a ten count, straightened up, arranged her features to hide the turmoil inside her and started to walk back to the Children’s quarters.

She had gone only a few steps when Dr de Foix started to talk over the tannoy. “Experiment Number x-33i has failed the night vision augment.” She stopped dead in her tracks waiting for de Foix to call the final information, that he would be processed. “It is the decision of the scientists that he will remain as a warning to the other Children. He will receive no more augments and he has received a human name to remind him, and you all, of his failure. X-33i will now be known as Jezebel Cain. He will continue to receive schooling at the expense of the Facility just to remind you how high a human can rise so that you all may rise higher.” Then there was a pause before the tannoy continued, repeating it’s message.

Number One managed to make it to the head before she was violently sick into one of the stalls. She only vomited once before she took a piece of toilet paper, wiped her mouth and chin, then blew her nose, balling it up to throw into the bowl and flushing. She went to the sink and washed her mouth out, then dabbed water on her face. It would not do to show weakness to the other children.

She ate lightly, and took a cup of the thick black coffee that had been left over since lunch. Normally it was the preserve of the scientists themselves who often worked late into the night. It was thick and oily, like tar and burned her tongue with it’s bitterness. Nevertheless she drank it down, thinking that if she was going to vomit again it was worth getting rid of something awful. There was still no sign of X-33i, no Jezebel she corrected herself, when she left.

She accessed her private terminal, pulling the visor down over her face, aware that everything she looked at was recorded and began to research in earnest, a glass of water beside her from which she sipped at irregular intervals. She started her research with the First Children, tucking her black hair behind her ear, with Khan Noonien Singh and the hidden empires which had created so much war and terrorism in the twenty years that bracketed the turn of the millennium. She bookmarked the remaining photos of them and read about the launch of the Botany Bay in 1996 using, what was then, revolutionary Stasis technology to create a sleeper ship. It was generally accepted that he and his crew of 200 Augments were dead.

She read about the scientists who had founded the study of augmentation even if they hadn’t known what they were doing. She read about the Gemini project until light stained the east through her window and her glass of water was long gone. She read about the Accident that had almost wiped them out and how one of the First Children had been lost in the great “New York hallucination” of 1995. She mentally recorded their names, and then looping her research through a perfectly banal series of algorithms and maths studies she hacked into her own profile to see what was written about her.

There was no secret amongst the Third Children that their designations responded to their genetic makeup. The primary letter, of which she was group X, signified which of the three doctors who had been responsible for her creation. The three letters were N, S and X but no one knew, although everyone had suspicions, which was which.

She was not surprised that X was de Foix. In fact it made sense of so many things that she accepted the information. The first number was that of her female donor, the second that of her male donor and the third the mitochondrial donor as these things were considered separate. All of their mitochondrial DNA came from one of the first children.

She was, she discovered, one of a very small handful with the second numeral 2. Yet when she tried to discover the identity of this donor, although he would have personally had nothing to do with her creation, she was stonewalled by UAC security much thicker than that of the rest of the facility. That was when her training kicked in. The First and Second Children were taught aggression, but the Third Children, with their empathic understanding, were taught lateral thinking. Instead of butting her head against the security she sidestepped it.

She began to look at newsfeeds relevant to the date of her genesis and saw the failure of the UAC Olduvai facility on Mars and the closure of the Arc. A little more digging revealed a pair of survivors, twins in fact, who had both been sequestered from the press by UAC security. She saw that although the female survivor, Dr Samantha Grimm, had had her spine broken her brother, John, had been completely unharmed.

She turned her research to John Grimm, who was a sergeant and medic with the RRTS from the American Conglomerate, who had recently changed their name to the United Earth Sphere. It was a political fiction because everyone, even the Children sequestered in Tian Xiaon knew perfectly well that Earth politics was all about the corporations. The Corporations controlled everything.

She pulled up his dossier, which was public information, and looked at him. He was a handsome man in his mid to late twenties with dark black eyes framed by thick lashes. He had a hint of a beard in the photo and his hair was as black and unruly as her own. She wondered what was so remarkable about him he had survived the Olduvai massacre, although details about that were scarce. She read everything she could noticing with a sort of detachment that for recognisable features he had a robed skeleton tattooed on his arm. She lifted the picture and put it to her desktop thinking she would research it later.

Then, with the sun steadily climbing to noon she locked the door of her cell, with the code suggesting she had spent all night studying, and lay down on her pallet to sleep.

He had to be her progenitor, Number One thought, I had his eyes until the third round of augments changed the colour, and I have his hair. She knew that with time it would reveal why he had been chosen, and he was not listed deceased. Perhaps, she thought, crushing her spare pillow to her chest as she did when she was tired, I will meet him. I will know him. I will know why he was chosen to be the genetic donor of some of the Third Children, of which only I remain.

 

2073, August 9 = Praha, United Earth Sphere conference

Number One sat with the soldier who was claiming to be her father, with Jezebel by her side, in the ornate palace at the top of the large hill which overlooked the river. They were talking about the practicalities and horror of genocide on a truly cosmic scale. The leader of the Second Children, who was present and arguing his case, had killed over 30 million people. There were estimates that placed the figure closer to forty.

He argued, well in fact, that it was a matter of survival, that he had killed only those who were infected and that the United Earth Sphere, or whatever it was calling itself that week, there was a titter through the crowd, simply couldn’t afford to treat that many people with the anti radiation medicine which he called Prussian blue.

It was all, he maintained, standing at his lectern like a visiting professor but for his Starfleet uniform, a matter of numbers. It took ten doses to cure a mild case of radiation poisoning. It took one to prevent it. Therefore it was impractical to try and cure in all but cases where the person was in fact unreplaceable, and that gunning them down was in most cases more humane simply because radiation poisoning was slow but invariably fatal.

Number One had heard these arguments before. She took the time to appraise Oliver Green, the leader of the Second Children and the genocidal monster that this senate had gathered to judge. She had met him before, several times in fact, but this was the first time she had seen him in his guise as human.

The first time she had been a small child, perhaps five or six, new to the VR suite and it’s unstructured teaching as Masha, her nurse, tried to explain to her that even before the Eugenics wars that unicorns hadn’t existed. He had stopped her, crouched down on one knee and asked her what her designation was so she told him, still holding Masha’s hand. She told him that she didn’t understand how what was real in the VR might never have been real because how then did the simulation know how to make it. He had laughed and said that just because a thing hadn’t been real didn’t mean it couldn’t be real and that when the radiation was gone perhaps there might be unicorns because the scientists wouldn’t need to work on the Augments so hard so they might make things like unicorns and dragons.

Masha had thanked him and took her charge away to play with Jezebel, though it was nearly ten years before he earned that name. Number One remembered that game well, they had played at unicorns and lions. She had cried when the lion killed the unicorn and Masha told her it was how it would always be, that beautiful things would be crushed by those with greater strength so she must be fierce as the lion if she was to be as beautiful as the unicorn.

The second time she had met him she was on the verge of puberty and she had stood with the other four girls who had exceeded expectations. They had stood their in their panties and training bras as he appraised them from over the top of his clipboard, judging them from their test scores and their VR simulations. He looked directly at her but if he remembered a little girl asking about unicorns he said nothing. “You will be Number One,” he said, “although I must admit I would have preferred a red head for the post.” Then he went down the list naming them by numbers depending on personal preference and scores. Then they were led out and Number One asked who he was that he had such power over the Third Children and the Matron who looked after them as preteens, Masha long since retired by the scientists, processed probably, had said that he was the leader of the Second Children and they should mind their manners.

Number One, accepting that name as her own, not as her due but because it was the first time someone called her anything other than X-32i, just walked back to her cell, pulled on her flight suit, tied back her black hair and went to nav training like always. When she returned sitting on her pillow was a small silver brooch of a horse rearing on two legs with a curved black horn on it’s brow. A unicorn. She stored it with her few belongings, sure that the scientists would let her keep this.

The night previous to this meeting she had been brought to his rooms in the erstwhile embassy he had claimed as his own. He had been wearing a thick red robe and drinking amber coloured brandy from a wide bowled glass. His bare legs were covered in thick black hair and there was a healthy amount on his chest and arms to match. “So,” he said sitting down in the velvet covered armchair, “you’re Number One.” She had expected him to seduce her but he hadn’t, just acknowledged her and sent her, and Jezebel, her shadow, on to her bed.

She despised him, but he didn’t need to know that.

In the dark of the embassy, lying together twined like cats in a sexless embrace Jezebel, whispered that he didn’t trust Green, that he was not sure that they had not been brought here to be processed. She told him she felt the same way and tomorrow she would go to the Hearing alone, he was to investigate the city in her stead. The city had been beautiful, she said, it was only fair that one of them got to see it.

And now Green stood at the lectern in the old opera house and told them about his justifications for genocide. He wore his red military uniform and talked of numbers, and profits and practicalities. “You want to kill him.” The Second Child beside her said in a low voice.

“Yes.” She said, “I do.”

The man beside her shuffled, she assumed it was to get a weapon, a shiv perhaps to slide between her ribs, plastic or ceramic to get past the antiquated metal sensors but instead he coughed and said, “it will not be easy, he has the backing of the company.” And that was the long and short of it that as long as UAC stood behind him he would be, hearings or not, untouchable.

“You want to kill him too.” She said.

“I thought at first it was my own arrogance.” His voice was a low rumble, “then i realised that it wasn’t me that was at fault. I think he’s insane. I am almost sure that the great Khan himself was his progenitor but Khan, for all his tyrannies, would never have done this. If he were only killing the infected then perhaps there would be a justification, but he kills humans and augments alike.”

“He is scared?” her voice was little above a whisper.

“Terrified.” Came the answer. “The more he kills the fewer remain to challenge him. There are times I wish I could knife him in his bed.”

“And yet you don’t.” She said.

“They tell us,” the man said, “that as augments we are without souls, the humans that is. They stand on street corners in what remains of their cities and they say this is all the fault of the Augments, and that they will never know paradise because they have no souls.” He paused for a moment, rubbed the sweat from his palms on his trousers. “I don’t know what a soul is,” he said and his voice cracked, “but every day I feel it’s lack.” He looked at her. “When I asked Green about it he said it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. I don’t even know what that means. He wants to be human, but more. We’re not, we’re Augments.” His face was a perfect blank mask. “You are hungry, Number One, or better yet, you need to call the Facility. Go now.” She nodded and slid from the bench where they were sitting and went to the back of the hall.

By the time she had counted to a hundred she heard the shot and the resounding scuffle. She didn’t believe however that Green was dead. People like that just didn’t die so easily. She didn’t call the Facility from the opera house vids, she called UAC instead. This was not a government, it was a corporation and corporations cared about profits and the bottom line. That could be manipulated for the greater good of the Third Children.

She mulled over the words that the Augment had said before he had blown his own brains out. It was the only option out of the information she had that the man had killed himself rather than continue to work for Green. This was a rather indelicate flaw on the part of the Augments. She was the first of the Third Children- this was a problem. If they remained with the Second Children they would burn with the world.

 

Green did not return to the embassy that night but Jezebel did. He was despondent, sitting in front of one of the windows staring out into the street. This house did not have one of the sweeping views of the city. He had one of the heavy coats from the wardrobe, a left over from the previous inhabitant against the city’s bitter winters, pulled up around him like a robe and his entire body language was closed off. The room was stifling hot, between the ceramic heater in the corner and the fire there was little air and she could see the sweat on his face that made him look feverish.

“Is it true, One?” Only Jezebel ever abbreviated her name. It was a sign of the closeness between them, if any of the others had tried it she would have broken their arm.

“About the lieutenant?” she didn’t want for him to answer, “yes, he sent me away and then shouting some propaganda he shot himself.” Her tone was calm and even. She had actually liked the man in some respects and his suicide actually made her think more of him.

“The man who took me about the city.” Jezebel began.

“Did he touch you? Hurt you, say something?” She had killed for less. Jezebel was her’s.

“No,” Jezebel shook his head, his hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat. “We went to the ancient grave yard, beside the river,” he nodded his head, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “He told me a story, about a wizard who protected the city, it’s an old legend.” he stopped, sucking in air, “he made a man out of clay, a golem, and on a piece of paper he wrote down a single word and it was the monster’s soul, and whilst it contained that piece of paper in it’s mouth it was alive, but when the invaders were run off or killed the wizard changed the piece of paper so instead of life it read death and the monster turned to dust.” He wiped angrily at his face with the flat of his hand. “I wanted to know more about the golem, so I went into the VR, I went online. It’s dying. Huge chunks are vanishing and the people there, they call it the Nothing, but I found someone, a woman, to tell me about the golems. She said,” he stopped and sniffed, “she said that she wanted them to have souls, to be treated well, but she didn’t think that they had souls, because,” he stopped again, “because they weren’t needed when they were made.”

“We’re golem, aren’t we? I mean, we were made.” She wiped his face.

“I don’t know.” She answered honestly. “Either we do have souls or we don’t. Why is this upsetting you?”

“There was a Carthodox priest, he said,” he stopped and took another sucking sighing breath, “he said that when you die your soul is judged and goes to paradise. We don’t die, we’re processed.” He breathed the words out, “they wanted to process me, and I would have just ended and there would be no paradise or anything, because I would have just turned to dust.”

“Do you know a test,” she said, fighting the lump in her throat to speak to him, “a way to decide whether or not we have souls?” He shook his head. “Is there a device by which it is possible to give us souls, much like our augments?” He shook his head again. “Then it is moot.” She made her tone crisp, one of command, “we can neither refute or deny their presence and even if we could we can do nothing about it. We are Augments and that is enough for us. If there is nothing after processing,” her voice dropped to a low whisper, “then we must live completely so that if there is nothing after we will have no regrets.”

He reached out and touched her hair, which was so different from his own. “This is why you are Number One,” he said, “because even in our doubts you protect us.”

“I spoke to the Director today.” She said, pulling away the heavy layers of wool and leather and fur that he had swaddled himself in. Underneath it he was still dressed for the heavy cold that blanketed the city. She took both of his hands within her own, trying to rub heat into the skin. It was a comforting gesture for she did not, even for an instant, think he might be cold. “I told him what happened in the Opera House.” She continued, “and about the heavy processing to which we have been subject. He paid for two thousand soldiers, he has received, by today’s count one hundred eighty eight. This displeased him. UAC has taken too many financial burdens that they might so easily cast aside such expensive commodities as we.” He nodded, lowering his head so that their foreheads were pressed together. “The Tian Xiaon Facility will be repurposed. The UAC Directorate have built a sleeper ship, they intend to leave the planet and return when the radiation levels have decreased substantially. I expressed the suggestion that we might instead find a different planet, that with UAC backing that instead we could set up a colony. He asked how it was that I was aware of these things, especially of Project Zion. I lied and told him that he had confirmed it for me.” Jezebel’s breath was hot against her face, their foreheads pressed together as if they were conjoined twins and that was where they were attached. “We leave within the year, all of us who remain. Let us give this planet to the Second Children, they have destroyed it for us and the humans are short sighted. We shall take their sleeper ship, we shall cast them aside and we shall find ourselves a new planet to settle, apart from UAC, apart from the scientists where we have no more fear of processing.”

Jezebel took a deep breath. “Do you know what he told me, the director,” she continued, “he said it was a common mistake that a queen existed only to provide heirs for the king, a true queen is the bridge between the king and his people that they might always have an intercessor even when the king can not make the decision in their favour for he will always have to think of the country. But a great queen is one who is prepared to stand aside from her king and rule the people in his stead and let the country be damned. I am, by design or fluke, the first of the Third Children, I am your number one, and I’m going to do what I can to take you all to safety. I will take you all to Zion.” She unfolded herself from his embrace. “I shall fetch you some Cat and then we can sleep.”


	2. The Enterprise

**Part Two**  
 **The Enterprise**  
 **James T Kirk, Capt USS Enterprise (Acting)**

_Keep us whole,_  
 _Unity is forever_  
 _Death is only the beginning_

 

**2258.32, 25,000 miles past Saturn, Sol system.**

One hour after the final shockwave that signalled the final end of Nero and the Narada and the entire bridge crew of the Enterprise had been bullied into a quick debrief which doubled as a meal in the officer’s mess. Doctor McCoy had gathered them all up with the same skill one used to corral cantankerous horses. Most of them were eating a thick meat stew but Commander Spock had a plate of raw sliced veg which he was nibbling on delicately. It was clear he had no appetite. None of them did.

McCoy wolfed down the stew like he hadn’t seen food in a decade, breaking apart the bread rolls with his fingers and dipping them in the gravy until the plate was clean. Then he sat back with a cup of the thick coffee cradled in both hands. “First,” he said, “we need to gather up the Vulcans and put them in one place where they can mourn together without worrying about what other people think. I was thinking the hydroponics lab as it has a lawn and fake sunlight and no one needs to go there.”

“Is that your medical opinion, doctor?” Spock asked, putting down the piece of celery he had been pretending to eat. If Kirk had been told before meeting Spock that Vulcans were as a species sarcastic he wouldn’t have believed it.

“Yes,” McCoy answered calmly. “Suppression will lead to all manner of medical problems, depressive mood swings, rashes, eating disorders.” Kirk swallowed, he picked at the gel cast that Chekhov had dressed his broken wrist with. McCoy noticed it but said nothing. “And they’re cluttering up the halls in little clusters like Nightgaunts and terrifying the engineers.” Kirk looked at Uhura who had no idea what a Nightgaunt was either but it was clear that it was a bad thing. Kirk also knew that Bones was goading Spock so that he would do what was best, otherwise he would have just run them out of the corridors, probably with flapping hands and a shooing motion.

“I am told we have no communications array, Pike has said, at length,” the way he said it suggested that “at length” was something of an understatement. “That this was not something that the academy trained for so to check that the long wave radio distress beacon was active.” Uhura nodded. She had actually done that. “Good, now I won’t feel so guilty about putting him in stasis.”

The food tasted like cardboard and ash to Kirk but he ate anyway, mechanically and carefully chewing each bite exactly thirty times before swallowing it down. He suspected it was satay based because it looked like the meat was swimming in peanut butter. He wouldn’t have put it past Bones to ask this because peanuts were high in nutritional value for a crew that hadn’t had the opportunity to eat in nearly twenty four hours. He was sneaky that way.

“Have you not removed the insect from Captain Pike’s spinal column?” Spock asked.

“Haven’t got the equipment or the staff.” Bones replied calmly, sipping his coffee. “I have the ruins of the secondary sick bay, I have four first aiders and a nurse and a slew of injuries coming in, so no, at the moment I haven’t removed the little bastard.” That was clearly offensive to him, Kirk could tell. “Speaking of,” he looked at Kirk, “who treated your injuries?”

Chekhov spoke up. “I did.” He sounded proud. “Ze keptin had a broken wrist and I splinted it and put it in ze sling so he could not use it, also ze topical analgeezic for ze bruises.”

“Good job.” Bones said, “nevertheless I want all of you in sickbay within twelve hours, whether you left the bridge or not, or, I don’t know, went sky diving off alien space platforms without a parachute.” He looked directly at Sulu, “or hand to hand with angry Romulans,” he looked at Spock, “without even getting yourself checked over.” Chekhov, still beaming under the praise, snickered. “Don’t laugh, kid, or I’ll have you down in sick bay treating burns from engineering.” Chekhov lowered his head in shame. “I meant it, Spock, about the Vulcans, you need to get them together to do something about their grief, even if it’s only having some sort of Fightclub in the shuttle bay to get the anger out, because if they don’t let it out it will come out in ways no one wants.” Uhura mouthed the word “fightclub?” to Kirk who just shrugged because he didn’t know either.

“Perhaps you would like to take the opportunity to speak to my people?” It was clear that Spock didn’t want to deal with it any more than anyone else did.

Bones’ answer was cut off by the inship communicators chirruping. “Ensign Trojanowski to Captain Kirk,” the girl was nervous but manning comms, she was doing well and Uhura had taken her out of the pool where they merely listened to radio waves and long distance range scanners. “We’ve got something on our long distance scanners, Sir, you really need to see this.”

“What is it, ensign?” Kirk asked.

“It’s a ship, captain.”

“Rescue?” Kirk asked, it really was a bit soon for that, even if they were stuck with impulse power it was too soon for someone to realise that the ship might not be able to dock or even tell them that.

“No, captain, she’s old, Lieutenant commander Willits thinks she came out of the debris field with the shockwave from the nacelle explosion.” She was terrified, her nerves wobbling in her voice and Kirk could hear it.

“Good job, ensign, I’m on my way.”

 

\---

The ruined ship took up most of the viewing window. It was vaguely insectlike in it’s proportions but it was also very clearly terrestrian. It had white letters painted on the side of it’s bulkhead, on what would have been the left mandible of the giant beetle it represented. It was separated into three parts, the two mandibles, what would have been it’s head, then through a narrow, and pierced umbilicus, a larger body.

It called itself the Last Unicorn and Kirk whistled low and under it’s breath as he saw it. He had never seen it’s like. “She appeared on our scans less than five minutes ago.” Willits said, climbing out of the captain’s chair, “we’ve tried hailing her but no success on any of the channels we can access and she’s showing life signs, but they’re faint. They blink on and off.”

“Could it be sensor failure?” Spock asked moving to his console.

“We thought of that and recalibrated the sensors, but look, sir, you can see for yourself.”

Spock lowered his eyes to the vid screen to look at the readings. “You are correct, commander, they are most unusual.” He lifted his head, “there is life on that ship, captain, but I can’t tell you more than that with the information we have at present.”

“Trojanowski, have you done a historical check for the ship? To see if we can isolate where and when she was launched.”

“Judging by the style,” McCoy said, “I’d put her at about 2075, her weapons there,” he pointed them out, “are post World War Three, but she’s not got warp capacity. I think,” he squinted at her, “with the life signs fluctuating, that she might a Sleeper ship.”

“A what?” Kirk asked taking over his chair.

“A sleeper ship, captain,” Spock said in that infuriatingly calm tone of his, the one that always managed to call Kirk an idiot savant. “Before warp travel even the possibility of reaching Saturn would have taken 23.4 years so stasis pods and cryo gel were available for the passengers. I can conclude that these were probably either high risk convicts sent to found a penal colony or simply very adventurous souls wanting to see what was beyond the solar system, and found themselves caught in Saturn’s orbit. It is clear that the reason that they haven’t appeared on scans until this time is that they were shielded by the same electromagnetism that the Enterprise used to elude Nero.”

“So, space convicts.” Kirk said.

“Two hundred year old space convicts, sir,” Sulu corrected from where he stood leaning over the replacement pilots.

“Ze Last Unicorn,” Chekhov said, “it is a story zat zey tell children in Russia, is wery sad. Ze Unicorn finds it is only ze one left, ze demon gazered zem up all and chased zem into ze sea, so she finds a wizard who turns her into a girl so zat ze world will remember ze unicorns.”

“It is also a tale that my mother told me,” Spock said, “but it was different, the unicorn was hunted out of her forest by men and found that the others had been rounded up by a great flaming red bull who had chased them down and rubbed away their tracks, but she found him and in rage she chased the red bull into the sea but the unicorns stayed there, in the froth, afraid to step into the land because of him.”

Bones sighed and rolled his eye. “The unicorn hears that all the unicorns are gone and so goes to find them. She learns that the red bull has gathered them all up long ago but is determined to find them anyway. So she finds a wizard who travels with her, translating the humans for her because they don’t recognise her for being anything other than a white horse. She eventually comes to the place where the red bull lives but it recognises her and to save her the wizard turns her into a girl. She meets a prince and as they search for the unicorns in the red bull’s kingdom she starts to forget that she was a unicorn and falls in love with the prince. But the old king, who cannot hold joy, reveals that the unicorns were driven into the sea so he could watch them try and try again to leave but are too afraid of the bull to do so. When the unicorn cries the wizard realises that they are running out of time and need to turn her back but they find their way into the lair of the red bull, and when he turns her back the red bull tries to run her into the sea. The prince tries to save her and is killed so the unicorn faces down the bull, but when she does he turns and walks into the sea freeing the unicorns. The unicorn saves the prince but appears to the wizard and claims that she is no longer free, because she has learned sadness and regret and those are things a unicorn cannot bear.”

“How do you know that?” Sulu answered.

“He bought it for his daughter.” Kirk explained, “I mean it sounds like a kid’s story right, and if it’s been around for ever it would have changed and everyone would know different versions of it, right, so knowing Bones he just bought a really old version of it for her.”

“That is remarkably astute, captain.” That was Spock being sarcastic again, “but surely if it is a child’s story it must have a moral, for that is the purpose of the stories that we tell children.”

“It sounds like face your fears.” Uhura said calmly. “It sounds like a lovely story but it’s a very unusual name for a ship.”

“If it is a convict ship,” Spock said, “then giving it a name that speaks of a great prison that it is unable to leave would be perfectly logical.”

Bones went to say something but the com chirped, “Private Asano to Dr McCoy.” He answered her tersely. “We need you in sick bay, sir, Captain Pike is having complications from the stasis sir.”

Bones’ eyes narrowed. “he wasn’t in stasis nearly long enough to get stasis sick.” He protested.

“That’s true sir, the tricorder shows it as the bug, it’s convulsing, sir.”

Bones swore. “I’m on my way.” He said and went to the turbolift, “and Kid,” he said, “if I even suspect that you have gone EVA with that splint on your wrist I will inject you with every STI known to Orion and then when they’ve flared up their vaccines too.” The turbo lift doors closed before he could continue.

“Ze doctor,” Chekhov said, “he is wery good but also wery scary.”

“Bones, he’s just,” Kirk started, “scared and angry and tired. He gets personally offended when people get hurt, because he wants them to be well all the time.” He took a deep breath, “he cares, and that’s why he gets angry.”

“Still scary.” Sulu agreed. “I really don’t want to tell him my right side pinches.”

Kirk just laughed. “How about we find some engineers and some pilots and go play EVA,” Spock’s eyebrow nearly touched his hairline, “by proxy.” Spock just shook his head as if he really didn’t understand why he put up with this, or perhaps that he wasn’t paid enough for this. Kirk really wasn’t sure, either way he beamed at the Vulcan. “come on, you know you’d have the suit on if you weren’t scared of Bones and his hypo of doooooom.” He elongated the word. “I feel a little dizzy.” He said and looked at his hand coming out of his dark blue gel cast. “And really tired all of a sudden.”

“Captain,” Sulu said turning from his post. “I think you better go down to sick bay yourself. You’ve gone very pale.”

Uhura stood up and walked around, “I’ll take you,” she said, “you suddenly look like shit.” She wasn’t the kind to swear so it must have been bad. “I wonder what happened.”

“You are really pretty.” Kirk said, his head was wobbling. “I don’t know if I ever told you that, but you’re really pretty.” She hefted him out of the chair. “Red is totally not your colour, you should wear gold, I know, you should be captain next, you’d be an awesome captain. Pike was captain and then spock and then me and now it can be you.”

“Are you drunk?” She asked with one arm about her waist.

“Nu huh,” Kirk said, “I haven’t had nuffin.” He stopped as they reached the turbo lift, “I might throw up on you.”

She pressed her com, “Uhura to sickbay,” she said waiting for the terse reply from the doctor, but instead it was the Nurse whose name she didn’t know that answered. “There’s something wrong with the captain, he’s suddenly tired and dizzy and acting like he’s very drunk.”

The line went quiet for a couple of minutes and then the nurse spoke up. “I spoke to Dr McCoy he says it sounds like the come down from a prolonged adrenaline high, apparently the captain is a fool idiot, you’re to put him to bed in McCoy’s quarters after getting some fruit juice into him, to bring up his sugar levels. Dr McCoy says he will be along in just over an hour and he’ll take over then.” Uhura thanked the nurse and checked the ship map, still pristine and pretty much the only thing, on the wall to find McCoy’s quarters.

She bundled the captain inside and sat him on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots. “I thought you didn’t sleep with farm animals.” Kirk slurred, falling back so only his legs hung off the bed.

“I don’t,” She answered, “but I do sometimes put them to bed.” Her voice was soft, “but only when they do something like save the world.”

“Ummkay,” he said sleepily.

“No, you can’t go to sleep yet, you’re at the wrong end of the bed and the doctor said you needed some fruit juice.”

“ummkay,” he slithered up the bed and tried to pull his shirt over his head but it got tangled in his arms.

“you’re in a sorry state aren’t you?”

“Saved world,” he agreed dismissively, “m’llowed.” She tugged the shirt off the rest of the way showing the terrible bruises around his throat and the dark angry marks on his chest, one of which looked suspiciously like a foot print, she shook her head, folded the shirt on Dr McCoy’s couch and got a juice bulb from the cupboard. But when she turned around Kirk was asleep and snoring.

She sighed, “I don’t know why he puts up with you.” She said, putting the bulb down where he could easily reach it. “It must be love.” She ran her hand over his hair softly. “Thank you, I don’t know if anyone else will say it, but thank you.”

\---

2258.35, 25,000 miles past Saturn, Sol system.

The Bridge echoed with the sound of people breathing through EVA equipment, loud and claustrophobic. Kirk looked tired but much healthier than he had when he had left the bridge nearly ten hours ago. “So,” he said to the three engineers and three security officers that were suited up in the shuttle, the Galileo, which cruised alongside the new ship, “let’s get this show on the road.”

“Captain,” Spock said in a low whisper, “are you still suffering from the effects of adrenaline withdrawal,for I must inform you there is neither a road nor a show to be put upon it.”

Kirk grinned. “I’m fine, Spock,” he said, “it’s just a human expression, you’re going to have to learn not to take everything I say so literally, or you’re going to blow out your transmission all over the mental highway.” Only he and Spock were on the bridge, the rest were the beta bridge shift.

One of the suited people laughed to himself, the noise echoing over the recording equipment in his helmet, “this is going to be fun.” He drawled, he had a thick louisiana accent.

“As I recall,” Kirk said, “Olsen said that just before he decided not to pull his ‘chute, I don’t want any more fuck ups like his, understand, you go in, you take data, you find out what’s going on in that ship and you get out. I want you in pairs, one engineer to one security officer, make sure you run a guyline between the pair of you, just in case. I want no heroics, and I want you out of there before your air goes into the yellow never mind the red. And stay on the line, we can monitor what you see from here, but we want you back safe and sound, it’s tulva root stew for dinner apparently, and if I have to eat it I’m making sure there are plenty of people to share it between.” There was some laughter from the comms, “now circle up, so we can check your cameras.”

The screen appeared with six distinct pictures surrounded by stars and the outline of the ship. “Okay, gentlemen, let’s start this.” One of the engineers said. “Team one, attach the guy line from the shuttle to the new ship so we can act in case something happens, its’ better to be safe than sorry. Team Two, investigate the power readings in the tail of the ship. Be careful most of the damage is there.” He stopped, “I’m the senior engineer so I’ll take the front of the ship. Remember this is a quick in and out, as the captain said, just because their’s tulva root for dinner doesn’t mean that we need to take stupid risks.”

“I like him,” Kirk said to himself, and noted the engineers name in his log for follow up.

“He seems to share your general distaste for tulva root.” Spock said dryly.

“Have you ever eaten tulva root?” Kirk asked, turning in his chair, “it’s the evil genetic love child of wall paper paste, mouldy socks and old boots, it smells like locker room and it has a gritty consistency. I don’t care how nutritious it is, it’s nasty. You know that’s something’s wrong when even cattle won’t eat it.”

“tulva root is incredibly nutritious.” Spock answered dryly, “in fact one single root contains all of the nutrients that a human being needs for one week, it is a staple on star ships for a reason.”

“Starfleet is owned by a large condiment company who want to make sure that we use everything we have to drown out the taste?” Kirk grinned at him.

“Indeed.” Spock answered.

On the screen Team Two were entering the back of the ship. They could hear them breathing. “This reminds me of that movie,” Kirk said, “you know the one with the girl in the really ugly panties with the flamethrower, now that actress was scary hot.”

“That may be the case, captain,” the engineer said, “but that’s not a good association right now, but I can say if I make first contact with any glowing smoky eggs I’m not prepared to introduce myself on behalf of the Federation.”

“Aye,” his security officer said, “in cases like that First contact is really a captain’s prerogative.”

“I’d happily do it,” Kirk said with a grin, “except my CMO would kill me, the egg, the thing in the egg and the alien embryo it implants in my stomach too, and then space us just for kicks.”

“Captain,” Team three cut in, “we’ve got an airlock, it seems there’s pressure on the other side. We’re going in.”

“Captain,” Spock said in a whisper, “should you be talking with such informality to the EVA teams, you might distract them.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do, Spock,” Kirk told him. “If I lighten the mood they’re less likely to panic over nothing. EVA is very stressful, I’m trying to keep their blood pressure down.”

“Fascinating.” Spock said as if the very idea was so new to him he would actually have to contemplate it.

Team Two were moving through the map, which the navigator had brought up as a transparent overlay with red marking the places that were giving off energy readings. The Security officer opened the door then scanned the room for threats before letting the engineer in to move through. In this case he opened the door and suddenly his viewster was full of a human face, mouth open in some sort of scream and arms wrapped around the suit in a strange embrace. “HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK!” The security officer said at pretty much the same time the entire bridge jumped. He jumped back and the corpse, because it was very clearly that disentangled itself and started to float. The security officer was laughing, that nervous laugh that you couldn’t help when you’d had a good scare.

“Sorry about the profanity, captain,” the engineer said, “it seems pilot first class Jacintha Sax here,” he was reading the name patch on the woman’s flight suit, “was feeling kinda lonesome.”

“What happened?” Team One asked, “is anyone hurt?”

“Just a dead body,” The second team engineer answered, “jumped out of a closet. Decided it had been a while since her last hug, scared the shit out of us, nothing to worry about.” He was laughing too.

“Well, that’s good,” Team Three said, “because we’ve got something better. We have an entire room of data crystals, perhaps, ten fifteen thousand of them.” He swung his flash light over the cupboards to show them, “we’ve got a lot of data here, captain, do we continue or start removing this now.”

“Team One?” Kirk said, “how is it going with the guyline?”

“Almost there, sir, only a few more minutes.” The engineer answered.

“I want you to go into the front of the ship with one of the storage crates from the shuttle, take as many of the crystals as you can fit in it and then back to the shuttle. We can always do a second run later, if we need to.”

“Captain,” the engineer answered, “if both of us carry one crate then we can fill one each, we can attach them to a second guyline between us and trail them behind us.”

“Good thinking,” Kirk applauded him. “But don’t take so many that you get tangled.”

“Captain.” Engineer Two said, breaking in, “We’re uploading the ship’s logs now, you should get the data packet in three, two, one.” True to his word the file flashed up on the viewster and Spock moved to his console to download it.

There was silence for a few minutes, interspersed with the thick heavy breaths that were normal for EVA and the occasional grunt and at one point a kick as a door proved stiff.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Engineer three said.

“Granted,” Kirk answered.

“Fuck, it’s the motherlode.” He said, “we’re in the central chamber, the cameras don’t seem to be picking up much except frozen coolant,” they were floating in large crystals through the air, “but you really need to see this.” He leant in over what appeared to be a larger chunk of ice stuck to the floor, and then his hand came into view and wiped it down, revealing a face with dark black hair. “There’s maybe twenty of them, they’re in cryo-stasis. They’re why we’re getting life signs, captain, they are alive. There appear to be other cryo-beds but that part of the ship is wide open to the elements, the debris in the field ripped it apart like paper. What are we going to do? I can wake them up, there is air here, but there’s no way to get them from the airlock to the shuttle.”

“Yes,” Spock said, “there is, we can transport them.”

Kirk hit his comm, “Kirk to engineering, what is the maximum load for a transport.” The answer came through as a what do you need captain. “What if we needed to move twenty cryo beds?”

“Two at a time wouldn’t be a problem, captain.” The head of engineering answered, Mister Scott must have taken the opportunity to sleep, knowing him it was probably under a large piece of half fixed equipment. “The main problem would be fitting them on the transporter pad.”

“Spock, I want you to start transporting the cryo-beds, I’m going to alert Sickbay and check with the quartermaster if we can’t find room for another twenty or so people. I’d give them my quarters if I had any, and T’Pau didn’t have Pike’s. You have the conn, get our people back safe.”

“Captain,” Security officer two said breaking into the dialogue as he reached the turbo lift., “we’re into their files, they’re Augments, sir, do we still continue?”

Kirk turned to look at the screen. “We were prepared to save them when we thought that they were murderous criminals, I don’t see how this makes a difference.” Spock looked at him with what might have been shock but he covered it quickly. “I’ll alert sick bay, get them on board ship, let the Federation deal with the fall out, I think enough people have died today, don’t you?”

When he got into the corridor he stopped, resting his forehead against the wall for a moment to catch his breath. It was easy if he pretended to be Pike, but there were moments when the impersonation didn’t work. Pike would have known what to do, Kirk knew he had just postponed the problem. Augments were the boogie monster that lurked under the bed, they were the shadow in the night, Augments had ruled the world, they had started World War Three and they had opened the way to genocide and murder where people thought that their neighbours might be Augments. But these were genuine Augments, people altered at the very genetic level to be better, brighter, faster. They were smarter, stronger and lived longer. They were immune to most diseases and had all sorts of abilities normal people just didn’t have.

He straightened himself up, but they were still people, he reminded himself, it wasn’t their fault that they had been changed. They hadn’t chosen this for themselves. There was only a small handful of them, twenty on board a ship with a crew of two hundred and fifty, with nearly that number again in Vulcans on board. There was a brig and if it came to it there were other places he could place them. As he walked to sickbay, reiterating his decisions, confirming what he had said, he reminded himself he had given them the right to live and not just be forever lost in space, he had chosen to bring them aboard ship. He agreed with what he had said in that moment on the bridge, there had been enough death today.

He would place it in the lap of the gods, if two hundred years in cryo-stasis hadn’t killed them, if taking them out of stasis didn’t kill them, they had as much right as anyone else to live. And if they tried to take over the enterprise they were in for a surprise the instant they tried to move her. Only one of her impulse thrusters was working, the others damaged by debris and the explosion, so as long as they wanted to in move circles they were set. He snorted a laugh to himself. Yes, the Enterprise was a perfect ship for them to hijack, they could have her dwindling stores of everything except tulva root and a great gaping hole in c-deck.

He was still chuckling when he got into sickbay. It was his first time actually seeing the devastation. He knew, intellectually, that the Enterprise hadn’t quite been finished when she left for Vulcan, that she had at least two months left in space dock, but this was the first time he had been in one of those parts that weren’t quite finished. This was the secondary sick bay as the primary had been taken out entirely in Nero’s first attack. Kirk had been very lucky himself that he hadn’t been there, in fact it was only because of Kirk that Bones himself hadn’t been there.

There were wires hanging from the ceiling, there was half built equipment and only six bio beds, none of which were bleeping and whirring like normal. One of the lights actually hung from the ceiling panel where it hadn’t been installed yet, but Bones was king of this ruin and had, as he had said himself, yeomen and first aiders and his one nurse, doing the best that they could. They had obviously moved all but the very worst injured into one of the side rooms as the beds were mostly empty. Captain Pike slept on one of the biobeds, on his side, with a receiving cloth under his mouth covered in some sort of blue gel. “Where are you hurt, captain?” the nurse said coming out of the wreckage to cut him off.

“I’ve been treated.” He said bluntly, showing her his gel cast. “I was looking for Dr McCoy, I’m to...”

“You’re to what, kid?” Bones drawled coming out from behind him, he looked grey and sleep mussed suggesting he had taken a short catnap.

“We’ve got incoming, twenty, twenty five cryo-sleepers, they’re on the ship. We’re transporting them and waking them.” Bones groaned like he was deflated. “They don’t have obvious injuries but there is the risk of stasis poisoning.”

“You are the devil incarnate and you have his own luck,” Bones said lifting his tricorder and medical bag. “I want them in packs of five, so make sure you tell your alien accomplice that, I get five moving, we wake the next five. Now come on,”

“I have to find the quartermaster, she doesn’t have comms, we need...”

The look Bones gave him should have frozen stone and caused it to shatter. “Right,” Kirk said, “if I can be of any help.”

 

\----

She didn’t wake in the cryo-gel easily, she erupted with a gasp, both hands clutching the sides and sucking in air like she hadn’t taken breath in decades. Truthfully she hadn’t. Her blonde hair was slicked down by the gel and she was, to everyone’s surprise, completely naked. “Christine,” the doctor said, kneeling beside her, “it’s okay, Christine, we’ve got you, you’re safe.” A blanket came from nowhere as she stood, an image of long soft limbs and curves and wrapped itself around her, the hair pushed back. “I’m Doctor McCoy, I need you to sit on that bench for me,” wobbly as a new born lamb she stepped out of the cryo booth, the gel clinging to her legs in globs and sliding down the curve of her ankle to splat on the floor. “I’m going to check you over, I need you what you remember?”

“What year is it?” she breathed. “Is this Zion?”

“You’re on the USS Enterprise, you’re safe,” his voice was soft and reassuring, Kirk had never really seen this side of him before, as he wiped a large clump of the gel from her forehead, before it fell into her eye, with the corner of the blanket.

“My name is Christine Chapel,” she said, “I am a medical doctor trained by the UAC company, we’re colonists, we were heading to build a UAC colony called Zion. What year is this?”

“2258.” McCoy said, “UAC is gone, there never was a Zion,” he ran the pen of his tricorder the length of her. “I could use the help of a doctor, now are you feeling nauseous, dizzy, anything I should know?”

“Slimy,” she said, pulling her arms free of the blanket and showing everyone her breasts in the effort, to slick her hair, gel and all, back from her face. McCoy tugged the blanket back up. “And a little cold.”

“You,” McCoy turned to one of the engineers who was working the lift that they had put the cryo-bed on, it was a small bedded trolley with pneumatics that it might allow heavy objects to be moved easily by one or more people. “Where’s the nearest hot drinks dispenser?”

“Here,” Kirk said, he had taken the initiative, “hot chocolate, I hope that’s right.”

She beamed at him as she took the cup. “Thank you.” She said softly. “It’s exactly right, cryo always messes with your body sugar.” Her smile was soft.

“I’m going to be just here,” McCoy said to her, “we’re going to open another one of these coffins, if anything feels untoward or wrong or,” he left it open, “I need you to tell me. You’ve been in stasis a very long time, I have no idea what it will do to you.”

She nodded. The second cryo-bed opened to reveal another woman, this one with darker blonde hair who stood perhaps a little shorter. “It was an amazon model ship,” one of the engineers muttered, “they’re all tall beautiful blondes.” None of them, to their credit, made mention of their nudity, even as their captain wrapped blankets around her and the yeoman he had sequestered to help them handed her hot chocolate in a steaming cup.

“Josephine,” she told them when they asked her her name. “Josephine Colt, I am a stellar cartographer. I was,” she stopped and turned her head and vomitted, dry retching a few heaves, stopping McCoy as he came at her with a hypospray, “I’m good.” She wiped her mouth and rinsed it with the chocolate. “Just blood sugar.”

The third was a man who went into spasm as soon as they opened the cryo-bed. “His blood pressure’s spiking,” the yeoman said as McCoy and Kirk tried to hold him down, both getting covered in the cryo gel as they did so.

“You’ll need to use Cat,” Christine said, “surely you have some in your bag.” She reached for it.

“It’s been illegal for a hundred and fifty years,” McCoy answered, “I’ve got other sedatives, can you find a dark blue capsule and press it into the gun there, quickly.” The man jerked upwards, nearly enough to throw the two of them off, even as Chapel rooted around in the bag, falling to her knees and the blanket falling open again, then he stopped and fell down, blood coming from his nose and ears to stain the gel. “He’s gone,” the yeoman said, “he.”

McCoy took the tricorder, “he didn’t have a chance.” he finished for her. His brain just liquefied.” Kirk swore, his hands were still on the man’s legs. “It’s not your fault,” he reassured the yeoman. “Don’t think it was, sometimes it’s out of our hands.” She wiped at her face angrily, and it was the first hint Kirk had had that she was crying. McCoy reached out and took her hand, “sometimes we do everything we can and it still doesn’t work, okay,” Christine nodded, agreeing with him and offering the poor yeoman some comfort. “And when that happens we go down into the gym and we work out the anger on people who can take it.”

“Or you have atrocious bedside manner,” Kirk continued, “and shout at all the patients who come in with little scrapes. You’re doing fantastic, yeoman, you really are.”

The next cryo-bed revealed a young man, short and slender with spectacularly mismatched eyes. He seemed more graceful on his feet as they wrapped the blanket around him and he introduced himself as Jezebel Cain, a botanist. Like Christine he showed no symptoms whatsoever of weakness from the sleep and actually asked if it would be possible for him to get a shower and some clothes.

The fifth, the last of the first batch, opened with a sort of ominous hiss. The woman inside slowly opened her eyes and rose slowly and stiffly, her fingers wrapping themselves around McCoy’s wrist in a way that pushed up the sleeve of his jerkin, even as she blinked cryo-gel from her black lashes she looked at him in a way that suggested recognition. She looked at the bench and the others gathered there. “How many?” she asked and her voice seemed stiff with disuse.

“twenty,” Kirk answered, not sure why he just gave in to her authority.

She closed those soft brown eyes and sighed, her hair was cut in a strict fringe that was clumped together with the gel and unlike the others she wrapped the blanket around herself like a dress, with the same wobbly grace as Christine as she stepped down. “so few of us.” she said softly. She looked at those on the bench and smiled.

“Do you have a name?” McCoy asked her.

“You.” She said with a jolt of recognition, “they call me Number One,” she said.

“Do you not have a name?” McCoy pressed her even as he checked her details with the tricorder. She leant in and whispered something in his ear. He went white and snapped the tricorder sensor in his hand. “We’ll just have to make one up for the records.” Kirk suspected something had happened there but that he had missed it. Whatever she had given her name as, whatever she had whispered in his ear, Bones thought it bad enough to keep it a secret. That was reason enough, Kirk thought, to pry.


	3. The Pariah

**Part Three**   
**The Pariah**   
**Jezebel Cain**

_Holy creatures, transform me into your servant, show me the path to enlightenment, as you alter my flesh and free my soul._   
_Death is only the beginning._

 

 

Benjamin Aurelian was beautiful. He had a wide clear forehead over an oval face with high cheekbones and a slightly pointed chin. He had narrow black eyes and thin arched eyebrows. Even his nose looked sculpted. Unlike most of the Third Children he had wide shoulders that tapered to a slim waist and narrow hips. His muscles trained to slimness rather than bulk like most of the N-class augments. He stood among them, each of them remarkable to look at, genetics adjusted to symmetry and arrangements found aesthetically pleasing, and burned.

Long acquaintance had not endeared him to Jezebel, he sat at the mess table, the captain recognising the general disdain that his crew had for the augments except where they had proven themselves, had given them access to the officer’s mess. The captain was young but he was observant. They all wore commandeered uniforms, some borrowed from existing crew, some taken from the remains of the quartermaster’s woefully undersupplied stores. Jezebel learned quickly that colour mattered amongst these new people, they were uniforms, each easily identifiable by the colour of their jerkins and the braid at their wrists. Jezebel wears red, a woman’s shirt that was the only one small enough to fit him.

The captain himself had given up a shirt to Aurelian. It was one he had never worn, one of Pike’s, the oft mentioned never seen true captain, not the bright golden and young Acting Captain, a wrap around avocado coloured thing but with a captain’s stripes on the arms. It is open at his throat to show the suprasternal notch and the slight bead of sweat that glimmers there like a pearl.

He wears the shirt like it’s deliberate, the way it shows off his long slender, ophidian column of throat, the slightly raised bump at the wrists where it hangs just a little too short, even the sweep of black, overlong hair, in waves around his pretty ears.

All of the Third Children are attractive, Jezebel thought to himself, but Aurelian burns like the sun.

It didn’t mean he knew why Aurelian had sat at his table.

Aurelian’s adjutant, Blaise Kettridge, sat at one of the neighbouring tables, close enough to be there if he was needed but just far enough not to be openly considered threatening. Kettridge was sandy blonde with eyes that the metallic striations of his irises had turned a vivid Lincoln green. He was sturdier than both Aurelian and Jezebel but not so large that one would call him bulky, just toned, and even his face was stronger, harder lines than the two of them, but his mouth was softer and his lashes thicker. The two were a common pair, Kettridge was the Jezebel to Aurelian’s Number One, he’d do anything for his factor, the difference was that Kettridge looked like he could.

Jezebel looked up at Aurelian from his strange tasting porridge, he had thought that if he could coat it in enough honey, something the ship had no shortage of, he might be able to remove the bizarre taste of shoe leather amongst the oats, but he had failed. It just added another dimension to the foulness, nevertheless he intended to eat every bite. “Kain,” Aurelian said and part of Kain expected Aurelian to just take the bowl.

“What do you want of me?” Kain asked stubbornly, clutching the spoon in his hand like a weapon. It was funny how the folds of Aurelian’s jerkin looked like knives.

Aurelian’s smile was a nuclear devastation. “You get right to the point, I always liked that about you.” He carefully took a spoon of his own porridge, almost mentally counting the oats that he lifted with the metal before he spoke. “I am a simple man, Kain, I want simple things. I merely want information, I want to know why Number One is spending so much time with Lieutenant Commander McCoy despite that the man is a breeder, she has volunteered to be his gofer, something she has never done, and as I know perfectly well she does nothing without many reasons there is at least one, I want to know what it is.” He took the spoon into his mouth, chewed and then swallowed, hiding his inevitable distaste. “I’m told that when she was woken he asked her her name, and she whispered something in his ear. I want to know what that was.”

“If her awakening was anything like mine I doubt it made any sense.” Jezebel said dismissively.

“Perhaps,” Aurelian said dismissively, lowering those black lashes against his pale cheeks in a deliberately slow and seductive movement. “But there was a persistent rumour at Tian Xiaon.” His voice was low and smooth, like chocolate, he had not been created to seduce but he was very good at it, “that when she bargained for your life that Dr de Foix revealed to her her very name, but yet neither she nor they ever used it. I want to know why.”

“You want to know a lot,” Jezebel answered, “there are information terminals everywhere you know. Or you could just ask her.”

Aurelian’s smile this time showed teeth. “She won’t answer, I’ve tried. But she’s just so fond of you, we all have our weaknesses after all.” Jezebel wasn’t sure that it was a threat. “especially as you’re so much less than we are, even your eyes are,” he stopped, “but that’s old news isn’t it.” Aurelian knew how deep his words burned. “I just wonder, I mean especially with the amount of time that she spends with him that she didn’t mention that McCoy could fix your eyes, well, make them match so they’re not so much an insult.” Jezebel’s knuckles around his spoon went white but he said nothing. “It must be terrible, I mean, the crew avoid us all and call us soulless, but we have our advantages, you get excluded with none of the benefits. Number One is trailing this doctor like a puppy, and what have you got, an atrium full of half grown vegetables and two hundred aliens. It must really be awful for you.”

“Fuck you,” Jezebel had heard one of the crew say it to another, an insult, a foul epithet when they didn’t use them, the Third Children had always been above it. “And if I knew I wouldn’t tell you, because you’re an N, I don’t know what you really want.” Kettridge stood and loomed behind Aurelian but was held back by a hand as Jezebel climbed to his feet, “but it’s augments like you that make them call the rest of us soulless.”

He lifted his bowl of what pretended to be porridge, thought he had his doubts, and scraped the contents into the bin designated for food, and dropped the bowl into the hopper to be taken away and cleaned. Aurelian said nothing, just kept taking those perfectly measured spoonfuls to his mouth for the exact amount of chews without a single hint of distate at the fact it tasted hideously wrong.

Jezebel didn’t bother to hide his anger when he went into the corridor, half expecting Kettridge to follow him but he didn’t. He kept his head down and didn’t walk around the curve as much as stomp, so much so in fact he collided with another person simply because he wasn’t looking where he was going. “Woah there,” the man said steadying him, then appraised him calmly. Jezebel had not seen this man since he had awoken, and there was little about him he knew. The man had sandy hair but eyes worthy of an augment, and unlike the others he only wore a black jerkin. Although he had the height and build of an augment, strong but wiry rather than bulk, his skin was marked and scarred so he was a human instead. He had his left arm in a gel cast and he was covered in bruises. “You’re Jezebel, right?” The man’s charisma was warm, the complete opposite to the careering glacier of Aurelian’s. “I was wondering if we could talk.”

“I have,” Jezebel began. He didnt’ put it past the humans to take him somewhere quiet to arrange a beating or a murder.

“The atrium yes, it was that I wanted to talk to you about, let’s go to my quarters.” The man was insistent.

“I,” Jezebel stammered trying to extricate himself from the situation, “the captain.”

At that the man laughed, a real warm belly laugh that was like the sun breaking over the ice. “I am the Captain, we haven’t met, have we, well not since you climbed out of the cryo-bed, I’m James Tiberius Kirk, Acting Captain of the Enterprise, and you’re Jezebel Kain, the botanist who has befriended the Vulcans. I just have some questions and I thought you’d be more comfortable if we went somewhere private to talk.” It was funny how Jezebel could feel Kettridge and Aurelian looming.

“Yes, sir, sorry, sir, I mean, I.” The words were completely gone.

Kirk’s grin was infectious and dazzling, it didn’t have the force or the cold of Aurelian’s, but it felt like shelter.

\---

Kirk was, for reasons he was willing to shrug off, not using the Captain’s quarters, there was a mumble about alien slugs and priestesses and First Officers that went by too fast for Jezebel to really follow, but he took him instead to the CMO’s quarters. There was clear signs here and there of both his and Dr McCoy’s, who privately terrified Jezebel, occupancy. There were two cups beside the drinks dispenser, with a third stacked neatly on a shelf. There were two of the PADDs stacked neatly beside the bed. Although the bed was freshly made there were two imprints upon the long bolster pillow at it’s head.

Kirk sat down on the edge of the bed and suggested that Jezebel sit on the cushioned couch welded to the wall. “Relax,” he said, “you look like I’m going to eat you, or swallow your soul or something.”

Jezebel tried not to flinch but didn’t think he’d been very successful at it. He wasn’t as good at this as Number One or even Aurelian. “I don’t know why Number One is following Dr McCoy, I don’t, really, I mean, she bunks with us, and you gotta know if he’s not here, so I, but she’s not.”

Kirk laughed again. “No, I,” he laughed again, “no, can I get you a drink, you look like you’re about to bolt and in the direction you’re pointed you’re going to hit the hull.”

“I.”

Kirk stood up and went to the drink replicator, he took down the third mug, rinsed it out with water and then pushed a button on the drink dispenser. Steaming liquid filled the cup and Kirk handed it over to him. “Relax,” he repeated. “I spoke to T’Pau this morning.”

“Oh, god, is this about reading to them, it’s just, when I was, well I like working with the plants and they seemed so sad and angry and lost and I remembered when they bombed the facility and the nurse started reading and it just helped and I thought it would help and I thought if they didn’t like it they’d tell me to stop, but they didn’t and it just seemed to help and, they were.”

Kirk watched it all calmly waiting for Jezebel’s words to stop tripping over themselves in his panic. “What are you reading them?”

“Peter and Wendy.” Jezebel said with his shoulder’s tight, he clutched the hot drink, he had no idea what it was, in front of him like a shield.

“T’Pau wanted to say thank you. She didn’t want to say anything to you directly because, but she told me what you did, how you went with her into that supply room and held her.”

“She just screamed, and, I thought, she looks so little and old, and.” He stopped at Kirk’s amused look.

“You did something for her none of my crew or her own people did, just by reading to them you’re treating them with more dignity than I know I have managed. None of us know what to say in the wake of this, it’s too big, we don’t know what to feel or do, but you just did something and that counts for a lot. You’ve made yourself a very powerful friend.”

“You?” Jezebel asked.

“No, T’Pau, she is pretty much the Vulcan’s empress, if they had one.” Jezebel started, he hadn’t known that. “My First Officer was worried that you might have done it to curry favour, and there are some members of your crew that I believe that of, and i wanted to ask you, but being as you look like you’re about to slither out of your own skin with just me I’m going to say you were just being kind.” He offered him another one of those dazzling grins.

Jezebel lowered his head, “I,” he started, “I was going to be processed,” he said the word carefully, “but Number One stopped it, and no one knew what to say or what to do, so they just avoided me. I,” he stopped, “everyone avoids the atrium, they don’t think they’re being cruel, they’re trying to be kind, to not intrude, and they’re scared, they’re scared they might make it worse and I don’t think they can, and if reading to them about Peter and Wendy and Tink and Captain Hook makes it better even a little I’ll sit there till I go blue.”

For an instant Kirk looked a little ashamed. “If you don’t want to work in the atrium any more, I understand, you can sit and read to them as much as you and they want.” Then his gaze became firmer, “are the crew bothering you? I understand that they might just be as scared of you because they don’t understand.”

“I’m used to it.” he said.

“What about the other survivors?” Kirk asked, “the Enterprise is not so big and so overpopulated that I haven’t noticed that you’ve split into camps.”

“It’s just Ns and Xs.” Jezebel shrugged but Kirk left it open for him to explain. “We were created in three divisions, N, S and X, each with a different lead scientist. Apart from Colt, who’s an S, we’re Ns or Xs, the Xs gather around Number One, and the Ns around Aurelian. It’s just,” he stopped, “it’s just what we’re used to. We weren’t encouraged to fraternise before.” Kirk nodded, showing that he understood. “And well, only the Xs ever gave me the time of day. I mean, look at me.”

“You’re a little more puppyish than the others, and a lot more shy.” Kirk answered. “and you have the most amazing eyes, god, eyes like that in Risa will have women lining up to jump in bed with you.”

“I hate them.” Jezebel said, clenching his fists. “I failed, and they failed me and I was going to be processed but they didn’t, they just left them so every time the others looked at me they’d know I was a failure and that I was worthless.” Kirk stopped him by raising a finger. He pressed his comm, “Kirk to McCoy, can you come have a look at something for me?”

Kain could almost hear the raised eyebrow. “Something medical?” came the reply.

“Kain’s eyes.”

“Is something wrong with them? Is he having trouble seeing? Double vision, what?” The doctor actually sounded concerned.

Kirk looked exasperated, “how about you come here and check them, we’re in your quarters, Kirk out.”

“From your description he thinks it might be space sickness.” Jezebel said, “double vision is one of the first signs, then the shakes, then hallucinations and nausea.” He stopped, “then you go after your crew mates with the nearest available weapon, or try to self destruct the ship, or space yourself. Number One said,” he stopped, “she said he didn’t trust space, that he said it was just death, danger and disease.”

Kirk laughed. “He told me that too, the first time we met. Space Sickness isn’t as much of a problem any more,” he continued, “with warp travel, we’re not stranded alone for such long periods.” He scratched at his chin, at a healing abrasion there, “my grandfather said that he wasn’t sure how much of the paranoia of space travel was pandorum, that’s what they called it, and how much of it was just good old fashioned paranoia that the person next to you was about to try and blow the ship up for no apparent reason.” His smile was soft and fond, his eyes looking down and to his left but his gaze seemed to stretch much further than the floor, into the very heart of space.

“You miss him.” It was a simple statement.

“Yes.” Kirk answered, “he was a good man, like Dr McCoy he had no time for idiots and did not suffer fools, he was there for me when I really needed someone to go to bat for me, and he did.” He blinked and there was that smile again. “He was, yeah,” he stopped.

“I don’t have anyone like that.” Jezebel said, it was just a simple statement.

“You have Number One,” Kirk corrected him.

“We don’t have souls, you know, because of the way that we’re made, they never found what part of our genetics gave us them, so we don’t have them.” He sort of blurted it out, and he didn’t know why. “It means when we are processed, I mean die,” he corrected himself carefully, “then we just end. It means that when she goes, if something happened, it would be forever. That terrifies me.”

Kirk smiled again, “ever hear of Pascal’s wager,” he asked, “probably not. When I went to live with my grandfather, Ty, I was in a really bad place, and I had lots of questions, and some questions don’t have answers,” Kirk did not seem to be comfortable with this kind of explanation, he was a man of science, of numbers and algorithms and finite solutions. “But he told me about Pascal’s wager, now I don’t know who he was, but he said that he couldn’t prove that there was an afterlife, but he believed there was one, and the Carthodox church said that to get into the good afterlife you had to live a very good life and do none of the fun stuff, or you went to the bad afterlife. But this bothered him because he couldn’t guarantee it was worth the effort of not having fun, so he said it was a fifty fifty thing, that he might as well toss a coin because he couldn’t ever know, because there wasn’t enough information, it was just beyond him. He said it was okay to be angry and maybe there was an afterlife and maybe there wasn’t, it didn’t matter, what mattered was what Pascal said, that it was what you chose, not because you thought you’d get something good out of it at the end.”

Jezebel nodded. “I understand,” he said, “Number One said something very similar to me, she said we couldn’t prove we did or didn’t have them, and there was no way to give someone one so we might as well just live to the best of our abilities.” He looked up at the captain, at his easy warmth and charisma, the charm that blanketed him like an aura, “i don’t mind that I don’t have one, I mean I failed, I wasn’t good enough.”

He said that just as the door swished open to admit the doctor. “Not good enough, my ass.” The doctor grumbled. “you know what, kid, the only person that gets to make that decision is you.” Jezebel looked at the doctor, at the features that he couldn’t have said why reminded him of Number One but they did and tried to smile. They had the same dark hair, but Number One was elfin and delicate and this man was solid, smaller perhaps than Kettridge, but more broad than the wiry captain. He understood now why she followed him the way she did. He was a good man. “Now let’s have a look at your eyes.”

McCoy leaned over him with a pen. After a few moments he said, “I don’t see anything, are you having issues with it.”

“Yeah, he’s having issues,” Kirk said, “they were going to kill him over the colour of his eyes and the others know it.”

McCoy shook his head, “and you couldn’t tell me that five minutes ago,” he rolled his eyes, “I despair of you, you come down to sick bay straight after dinner, I haven’t got all the equipment on board but I can do something. If I could get my hands on the scientists in that facility,” his hands suddenly seemed dangerous and very large. “You need anything else, kid?” He asked the captain. Kirk shook his head. ezebel thanked him. He had been wrong, McCoy was a very good man. McCoy sat down on the edge of the bed, “I finally got that mother fucking slug out of Pike, I don’t know what I would have done if Chapel hadn’t suggested cryo-gel and cat, I had to make an illegal drug in the lab,” he rolled his eyes again, “but damn if it didn’t make the difference, you,” he looked at Jezebel, “I’ve taken her off shift, do whatever you people do to make sure she stays off, because damn if you don’t work yourselves into the grave.”

“Pot, kettle,” Kirk said under his breath but McCoy just gave him a dark look.

“I’m asking,” he carefully enunciated the word, “that you make sure she gets some rest and eats, now git, I’ve been on my feet for ever and I would really like to get some shut eye, that includes you,” he paused to emphasise the word, “captain.” Jezebel accepted the dismissal and left bowing his head to the two men. As the door slid shut he heard the captain say, “he’s just like a puppy.” Whatever McCoy said was cut off by the door.

He went to where they were archiving the data crystals that the crew had taken from the Last Unicorn, he knew the two officers who did the job well and they treated him with a simple camaraderie, but today they were absent as he pulled out one of the crates and started looking through it. He selected one of the children’s books, one that Number One had read to him, and the sheer ludicrousness of the situation struck him. He was in space, 26 years from Earth, 200 from the Earth he had known and he was reading children’s books to aliens. It started as a giggle but before he knew it it had been overtaken by a keening sob that he couldn’t quite stop.

“Kain,” the Vulcan woman said behind him, placing her thin hand on his shoulder. He recognised her only as one of the oldest of them. She had a sort of bird brittleness that made it look like the horror that had overcome her might cause her to shatter at any moment, and a face like a nut, brown and creased. He didn’t think what he was doing when he took the comfort she offered and clung to her, sobbing.

When the storm had subsided, “we have lost so much,” she said, stroking his black hair with the flat of her hand, “that we forget how much you have lost too.” She had hummed tunelessly under her breath, “and yet,” she looked around at the data crystals in their boxes, “you tried to save so much.” She was rocking him, he didn’t know where it started, “when I was a child I lived in the desert, I always thought it was the deep desert but I learned later that I was wrong. I would go out at dusk to gather the water from the dew collectors, they used to shine like diamonds in the dirt and grit, I still miss the feel of it between my toes,” her tone was soporific, “and in the morning we would go out poling for sand trout, they died out before,” she stopped unable to say it, it was too raw, too new “no one knew why, even with all our science, you had to go out before dawn and when I did I used to see the priestesses in the purples and golds of the morning, they wore these white dresses and carried ewers of sacred water upon their heads, their hips swaying to help support their load.” There was something in the way she said it that meant he could visualise it. “I wanted more than anything to be one of them. Instead I entered the science academy, I didn’t have the tenacity for the priesthood, and now they’re gone, their temple is gone and so is their fountain.”

“No,” Kain said to her, “it’s not, you remember.”

“When you read to us, of Peter and Wendy and T’Galili,” she wonderfully mispronounced the name, “we do not see your mermaids and your fairies, we see the forests of the far north where there was more water and their shadows. We see the seas of the west where we bathed our feet because it was logical to wash the sand off, despite that it just got more between your toes. We see our ships and our buildings. That is a priceless gift.” He looked at the floor and then at the data crystal at his feet. “Will you read to me, Jezebel Kain?” It was strange how his name never sounded like an insult in her mouth.

He plugged the data crystal into the attachment that the crew had built for his PADD, which was very like the tablets that they had had before, even if it offered much more functionality, and then cleared his throat, which was hoarse from sobbing. “In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.”


	4. The Engine

**Part Four**   
**The Engine**   
**Dr Leonard H McCoy MD, CMO USS Enterprise**

 

_In the end it comes down to just one little thing..._   
_Unity after death,_   
_Unity forever_   
_Death is only the beginning_

 

 

**Stardate 2255.814, Tillamook, Oregon**

The dark haired man sat with his back to the bar, staring out the window at the turqoise sea beyond. He was sipping slowly from a glass of bourbon when the old man sat down next to him. “Hello, old man,” the elderly gentleman said creaking in his movements. His skin had turned to papery vellum over the years and he didn’t have much hair left, there were brown liver spots on his hands and bald head. His eyes had lost none of their brightness even if his mouth had turned into a crinkled line.

“Jonathan Archer,” the younger man said. “It’s been a very long time.” He turned to look at the man, “i wasn’t expecting you for another five or so years.”

“Things change.” Archer told him blythely. “You know how it is, opportunities come up that we can’t really overlook.”

A black eyebrow quirked up. “Opportunities, kid?” he asked, his voice was a soldier’s low gravel, and when he lifted his bourbon to his lips Archer could see the robed skull on his forearm. It was clearly deliberate that he showed it, he was usually very careful to keep it hidden.

“Well, John,” he said and reached into his jacket for his PADD which he handed over. “Sometimes things happen.” There was a picture of a young man on the PADD, he looked like John if you squinted, he had the same forehead and chin, and his hair was a similar colour. “That,” Archer said, “was Doctor Leonard McCoy, he was found this morning drowned. He was missing for three days as far as we can figure.”

“Murdered?” John asked. His voice was suspiciously cold. If the man had been murdered he would never see justice.

“No,” Archer said, “Suicide. There were stones in his pockets and water in his lungs, he was almost unrecognisable except through DNA testing but there were no bruises or marks to suggest he was coerced. His blood alcohol level was nearly 80 percent though. He’d been in the water for days.” John nodded slowly. “The resemblance was noted as remarkable enough it flagged the search program.”

“I’m not surprised.” John drawled. “Enough that give or take a year or two he would be perfect for me to replace.”

“Plans were in motion to that effect.” Archer agreed, “he would have been moved to a colony with a new name and Leonard McCoy would have been recruited by Starfleet. We considered it a win win, the boy was a remarkable theorist and surgeon. It’s a terrible tragedy that we lost him so young.”

John snorted. “So, I trust the new identity is in place.” It wasn’t a question.

“Both parents dead, mother in childhood, father less than a year ago. Fired from Atlanta General due to political bullshit, his ex’s father was the Dean of Medicine and it was a nasty split. She divorced him with enough legal conditions that the chances of him ever even getting an update on his daughter were slim. He was pretty much labelled persona non grata by the whole of Georgia.” John didn’t question, people did crazy things for love after all. “Everything you need is on the PADD, Leonard.” He said. “We’ll need you in Riverside for 0800 in two days time, what state you choose is up to you.”

“And what’s in Riverside?” John asked.

“Starfleet academy recruitment shuttle. You’ve been handpicked, old man.” Archer looked almost gleeful at this turn of events.

“I haven’t practised medicine in thirty years.” John answered bluntly.

“Taken into consideration, you’re going to spend the first year between the labs and the hospital, we’ll get you back up to speed as quickly as we can.” Archer scratched at his grey hair. “Your class load at the academy is geared around it.”

“The Academy?” That shocked John. “I thought we passed over that bullshit when you were in the Academy.”

Archer chuckled. “Things change.” He said, “we were grooming McCoy here,” he looked at the PADD, “for work on the front lines, where medicine makes a difference, where surgery is invented, proper frontier medicine. You can take his place easy enough. So, go through the Academy, you’ll be appointed CMO under Captain Pike as soon as you graduate, and he will be in direct contact with your new handler.”

John scoffed. “I haven’t been in the Black since the Aesir, what’s that ten, fifteen, twenty years? As I recall you were the one who grounded me.”

Archer sighed. “I know.” He said sadly, “but it was decided that that was where we needed you most. Starfleet owns you, John,” it was said rather sadly. “And I know it’s bullshit, but it’s going to use you as a commodity, even if we personally hate it.” Archer was a good man, John knew that, he was one of the ones who had trained Archer, he had also trained those others who had had a hand in him. “It’s a bit of a gift, letting you go through the academy, as a med track student you’ll have your own apartment on campus. You might make some new friends. You’ve already been tested out of basic self defense, phaser training- that kind of thing. Things change, John, and I won’t be around forever to protect you.” John snorted a laugh at that. “They’re looking around for my replacement as your handler already.”

“Come on, kid,” John laughed, “you can’t be more than ninety.”

“I wish.” Archer said, “some days my bones remind me just how long ago ninety was. Besides, you know what they say, you’re only as old as the person you feel. I stopped counting at a hundred. God, I miss the Black.”

“I don’t.” John said bluntly. “It’s nothing but disease, death and mutation. Gonna be my faculty advisor, cadet?” he asked changing the tone.

“It’s Admiral now.” Archer said with a laugh, “I haven’t been your cadet in years. But yeah, we’ll swing it, okay old man.”

“It’s good to see you, kid.” John said. “So,” he frowned. “Leonard.”

“Leonard Horatio, mostly called LH.” John frowned again. “McCoy it is then.”

\----

Stardate 2258.79, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, California

 

Lieutenant Commander McCoy moved through the corridors of High Command with a determined purpose, wearing his dress whites he could have been any of the high doctors of Starfleet when the woman stopped him in the corridor. She wore a white coat over her science blues and her blonde hair was severly cropped at her chin, she was an attractive woman but for some reason she gave McCoy a chill. “Dr McCoy.” She said trying to attract his attention. “I was hoping to catch you before you met with Admirals Pike and Archer.”

“I am in something of a rush, but how can I help you, Dr Dehner?” He said, “perhaps you can walk with me.”

“You are aware,” she said falling into step beside him, “of my research into Espers.” It wasn’t a question and he nodded assent. “It appears to be hereditary and I was hoping for access to.”

“If I can stop you there, doctor,” McCoy cut her off, stopping in his tracks to turn to look at her. “Both the genetic samples of the survivors of the Last Unicorn and the work of Dr Cruikshanks is classified and I simply don’t have the access to revoke that for you.”

“You have access to them.” She answered.

“Yes because it directly affects the wellbeing of the crew. I have several of the survivors under my care and as is well known Dr Cruikshanks work directly led to the work in hybridisation that led to the birth of our First Officer. I cannot simply revoke those rules for you because it might aid your research, even if it is highly praised by the admiralty.” McCoy was careful how he chose his words. “And a lot of that research was simply illegal never mind unethical, I will not risk that for your career, Dr Dehner, and i am disappointed that you are even asking me to.”

“I was simply going to ask that if I framed several questions whether you could answer them without either breaching confidentiality or breaking the law.” Her eyes seemed to him to have a strange silvery film that gave him the creeps. “Also, Dr McCoy, it is a matter of record that you have no Esper rating, that no tests were done.”

“That’s incorrect,” he answered blithely, “it was one of the conditions of my hiring that I wouldn’t be listed for the psychics, if you check my account I was Esper rated by none other than Ambassador Eve.”

“You have powerful friends, Dr McCoy.” She said. It didn’t deter her in the slightest.

“It is a peril of being a good doctor.” McCoy answered, “sooner or later every one gets hurt.”

“That sounds awfully like a threat.” She didn’t break stride, walking beside him.

“And why would I need to threaten you, Dr Dehner, you are the star of the Psi Ops, and I am a mere medical doctor, it was a simple statement of fact. If you wish to see my Esper rating then perhaps you would do better to ask Ambassador Eve, after all wasn’t she the one who set up the entire division.” Dr Dehner stopped. No one talked to Ambassador Eve. There were rumours that she wasn’t even real. Others suggested that she swallowed souls to keep her youth and beauty. Dehner had only ever seen Ambassador Eve at a distance. “I didn’t think so, now if you would excuse me.” He broke away from her, leaving her a few paces behind. “If you would frame those questions I would do my best to answer them within confidentiality and the law, but I do not imagine there will be much of aid to you. Dr Cruikshanks research was in mitochondrial eugenics primarily within compromised systems as such could be exploitative of hostile environments.”

“It is my theory,” Dehner said, “that it is mitochondrial mututation that allows for any kind of esper at all. I am also petitioning the Vulcan Elders for examples of their DNA that I might be able to find answers.”

McCoy sighed. “You have permission for this field of research.” He said, “because the admiralty will shut you down. They cannot risk another eugenics war, even on paper. After all didn’t Dr Cruikshanks vanish after what happened at Tarsus IV?”

“He was not responsible for the famine.” Dehner said stiffly.

“No, he was not but strangely the children he saved all have remarkably high Esper ratings and all three of them survived and are magnificent people. Do you not find that even slightly suspicious?”

“Are you suggesting that he altered the children?” She was genuinely horrified at the idea.

“I’m suggesting that he might have,” McCoy said bluntly, “desperate men do desperate things when pushed to extremity and I imagine those children were dying. That means that apart from the survivors of the Last Unicorn, which as we know predates the Eugenics war, that there are three more eugenically advanced super soldiers just waiting, and worse yet if they were innoculated in childhood they would carry the possibility that their children might be even more advanced. We do not need another Eugenics war and the admiralty will do everything to prevent one. I do not believe that you will be waylaid in a dark alley but I would suggest that you accompany me now to my meeting with Admirals Pike and Archer before that even becomes an option.”

“You are suggesting that it might become a possibility that Starfleet might destroy the survivors of the Last Unicorn even after they went to so much effort to rescue them.” She was honestly aghast.

“And you are a fool, Dr Dehner, for suggesting that they won’t.” He pushed the button for the turbo lift. “Section 31 article 14 allows these things in times of crisis and aren’t you just a little afraid that perhaps one of these children,” he used the word carefully, “might rise up and become another emperor, that Starfleet becomes his armada and conquers the universe just because he can.”

“What’s to stop any one doing that?”

For the first time McCoy looked at her with something like approval as they stepped into the lift. “Precisely. But they’re stronger, faster,” he stopped, “better, do you think that any of those shining children will become starship captains, or will ever be allowed to step into productive roles in the fleet above that of scientist or nurse or aide.” The lift stopped at the floor. “Even your own precious Psi-ops, Doctor, is merely a weapon.”

“Then perhaps the suggestion that we be placed on Mars with the other weapons testing is a good idea.” She drawled the words out and McCoy’s mouth went dry. “Of course you’ve heard about the ruins found there. i imagine that they are a fascinating study. I’d quite like to see them.”

He forced the words out, “I can’t see that they would be of any use to you.” He said, “they’re probably just left overs of the prewar space programs. Mars is so close after all, even they managed that far.”

“The Last Unicorn was caught in the rings of Saturn.” Dehner corrected him. “They had much more ability than you credit them with. Moonbase One was built before the war, so it is entirely likely that they colonised Mars, I never understood why they use it for weapons testing.” She sounded genuine in her question at that.

Number One met them at the door. “Mars is a waste of time.” She said in her perfect clipped tones. “Even before the war it was considered a wasteland, it is much more dangerous than it appears due to it’s storms and the cost to terraform would make it unproductive even if they found rivers of trilithium and latinum.” She turned with her black hair falling around her shoulders in a perfect shawl. “Dr McCoy, the admirals are waiting upon you. Is the,” she appraised the uniform, “Doctor accompanying you at this time?”

Number One was one of the Last Unicorn survivors. She stood tall and straight, as if she had a flexible steel rod instead of a spine, and had long thin fingers. Her eyes were wide but she was not naive. McCoy himself had suggested that she serve as Pike’s aide when she had dragged him to physical therapy by lifting him from his bed, where he was - as she put it - wallowing in misery, and putting him in his chair. She appeared to have no weakness, but Pike admitted that she had been created to serve as the mother of a race of perfect beings. She had easily stepped into the role of Pike’s queen, and took over everything she deemed beneath him.

Her sister, if such a word could be applied to a genetic double, had become McCoy’s head nurse.

Number One, who would accept no other name than that which had been printed on her stasis booth wore the gold duty uniform mini dress with the gold collar, the command insignia glinted on her breast and she had the full stripe of lieutenant, because nothing else could serve an admiral, even a rear Admiral like Pike. She had swapped the uniform solid knee boots for a pair that laced up the front to better show off her magnificent legs. She wasn’t wearing the regulation black tights either. “Dr Dehner,” Pike said from his chair at the side of Fleet Admiral Archer’s desk, “this is a pleasant surprise.”

“Dr Dehner,” Number one said, “was talking about possibly moving Psi-ops to Mars.” Archer barked out a laugh suggesting the possibility of that happening. “Dr McCoy was in the process of explaining to her that Mars is nothing but disease, danger and death. It was such a familiar tirade I’m sure that he didn’t mind me interrupting him.” She took her place on the bench and lifted her PADD to take the minutes of the meeting.

“I will be excusing myself.” Dr Dehner said, “Dr McCoy and I were merely talking about furthering my research. I shall send you those questions, Doctor. It’s been a pleasure, Doctor, Admirals, Lieutenant.” She excused herself.

Archer waited for a five count after the door closed before he spoke, “she’s a bright girl, but damn if we wouldn’t be better off dropping her in some backwards colony with a bow and arrow and hoping that’s the end of it.”

“You’re kidding.” Pike said.

“Reopening Mars would be a cluster fuck and a half.” McCoy said taking the other chair. “Trust me on that one.” He crossed his legs. “I take it this is the hand over.” He didn’t blink but the slow southern drawl slipped from his voice to the more rounded Mars accent he maintained no matter how he tried to slough it off. It was a simple shift from McCoy to Grimm. Archer nodded. “Well, kid, we had a good run.” Grimm told him, “is that all, because we have nearly half an hour before we’re even early for that state dinner we have to attend.”

Archer laughed. “Don’t be a stranger, old man,” he said, “I’m just not young enough to watch your back but that doesn’t mean I’m going to the great kennel in the sky.”

“You call Kirk kid too,” Pike said, appraising the man in front of him, the same one who had operated on his spine and trying to resolve him with the debrief Archer had given him, “are you grooming him to take over from me?”

“No,” Grimm’s answer was curt and to the point. “It’s something of a military tradition, back from before Starfleet anyone dramatically younger than his crew mates became kid. I’m just in the habit.”

“Your file is,” Grimm waited for the word impressive, “absolutely terrifying.” Pike said. “I believe with my officers in a total no bullshit policy and I expect the same from you. If you say jump I’ll take your advice seriously.” he grimaced, “once I get out of this chair, of course.”

From her place Number One gave a dramatic sigh. “If one will visit strange new worlds and insist on eating the local delicacies...” she said with the hint of a smile on her bee stung mouth, “well you can only hold yourself responsible. Why next you’ll be eating seafood from a vending machine. Do you see,” she fluttered her eyelashes, “exactly why you need me.”

“We asked you to be his aide simply because it’s so much work.” Archer agreed, “otherwise we’re worried you might up and take over the universe.” It was fondly teasing, Archer always had liked women that could snap him in two like a twig. “You would probably do such a wonderful job of it, bring the Klingons to heel within a week or so that we would all be out of a job.”

Number One took it as a compliment and not an insult, though she could have done so. “I do so pride myself on my professionalism.” She said, “and ruling the universe would only occupy me for a week or so and then well I’d have to start conquering other universes, parallels and the like, and it would be hell on my nails.” Pike laughed. “And assisting the Rear Admiral keeps me far too busy to entertain such thoughts. What would I do with the entire multiverse under my thumb? I never understood the appeal.”

“You could use a planet cracker on every version of Mars.” Grimm suggested, “I’ll help you build them, I’ll even do your nails after you finish pressing the button.” He turned to the two men, “Dehner suggested that some artefacts from Mars had appeared, she mentioned ruins. Why wasn’t I informed about this?”

Number One stood up and offered him the PADD she had been using. “It’s new.” Archer said as Grimm flicked through the photos. they showed an upright statue that had been unearthed from the dust and inside there were hieroglyphics on the walls. “We have rescheduled a rather large bomb blast from next week to that sector as of eighteen hundred hours today. It was an unsanctioned mission from the private sector. It has been dealt with. The first we heard of it was when it hit the newsfeeds. We’ve announced it as a hoax but the conspiracy theorists are having a field day. I suppose it would be easier to deny if there was nothing left on Mars.”

“But no matter how deep we burn,” Pike continued, “we find more fox holes.”

“The Praelenthor war with what came out of the breach lasted over a hundred years.” Grimm pointed out. “I still suggest breaking up the planet.” He had no doubt or quavers in his voice when he said it, “one of those weapons tests could easily go wrong. Do you know what this is?” He turned the PADD to show them. It was a man holding aloft a small box and around it there were prone bodies and between the man standing and those on the floor were shadowy figures. “it’s the Soul Cube. Do you realise how dangerous it would be if someone started looking for this again?” He took a deep breath. “I’m not going back to Mars. Fuck it might spread past Mars this time, it could take out the whole galaxy without stopping, the multiverses wouldn’t be around for Number One to take over, there would just be death and mutation and...”

“I understand.” Pike said, “that’s why we’re burying it. I gathered from the files that the Soulcube wasn’t on Mars.”

“It’s not.” Grimm cut him off bluntly. “It’s where it needs to be, and that’s the end of it.” He sat back and measured his breaths carefully. “You didn’t ask me here about that, you asked me here about the Last Unicorn Survivors.”

Number One stood up and excused herself, she might have been permitted, by being Pike’s aide, to know about John Grimm but not about this. When she was gone Archer templed his hands under his chin. “Why didn’t you just blow the ship?”

“At the time of it’s discovery, which was less than an hour after escaping Nero’s black hole,” Grimm said, “I was operating on Rear Admiral Pike, trying to sedatethe Centaurian slug wrapped around his brainstem, by the point I was alerted the data feed from their computers, with pre war history that I would have thought starfleet would find invaluable, and the ship started to remove the stasis protocols on it’s own.” That was a lie but it dien’t really matter. The logs were adjusted to show it as the truth. “I treated them and ascertained, as per my report, that Number One was the highest ranked officer on the ship, the captain and command crew were dead due to faulty stasis pods. One ensign died of stasis sickness on board the enterprise. What was left was support staff, scientists and two doctors. There were over two hundred berths on that ship, we saved less than twenty due to damage from the debris field which shielded them. It was just luck we found them.”

He looked at Archer, and braced himself for the truth. “I suppose I could have dealt with it before it became a media sensation but I had seen Vulcan dead, I had become CMO because eighty percent of the medical staff on the ship died and Chapel and Colt were able to help me cope with the influx, and maybe I just had seen enough death.” He let out a sigh. “To add to the matter they were only kids, Number One is twenty two years old, six years of which they spent in prep for the journey. Eighteen twenty year olds, two with medical training, four botanists, who were happy to work the atrium and try to supply a crippled ship with food it couldn’t get because of the gaping hole in the bulkhead of their stores, three astrophycists, two geologists and seven engineers on a ship so crippled it didn’t even have impulse power except in one thruster which meant we were going round and round in circles. What would you have done, slipped a little exedrine b in their immunology boosters?”

“Press wise,” Pike said, “it’s a clusterfuck but we’ve dealt with worse. I just,” he stopped, “I wanted to know why you of all people, knowing it to be such a minefield having lived through the eugenics war, hadn’t taken such an easy step to deal with it.”

“They’re not conquerors.” Grimm said flatly, “they’re just kids who need a bit of direction.”

“The press is making them out to be devourers of worlds.” Archer said calmly, “calling them Clones and then the remnants of the unitologists are saying that they have no souls and a hundred other things which is all complete bullshit of course, but there are groups who are taking it seriously. I had T’Pau in my office this morning.” Grimm blanched, everyone was scared of the Vulcan matriarch “asking me if it was true that they had no souls.”

“I imagine Number One had something to say about that.” Grimm said with dark amusement.

“She was perfectly polite in her admonition to stick it where the sun don’t shine.” Pike answered. “Of course she worded it far more politically than I did.”

“T’Pau mostly wanted to know Starfleet’s stance on these things. We have to remember that for all their logic and science and coldness the Vulcans are a deeply religious race and T’Pau is their leader. I wouldn’t be surprised if she asked because she wanted access to the science that created them because of the help it would be in rebuilding Vulcan’s population, but of course she couldn’t come out and say that.”

“No fucking way.” Grimm growled, “after what happened the last time the Vulcan science academy got near genetic research. Over her dead body.”

“What happened?” Pike asked. “That wasn’t in the files I was given to read.”

“Ever heard of the Forbidden Zone?” Archer asked. “Want to guess why it’s forbidden.”

“What was the final toll of the clean up from their experiment, thirty, forty thousand dead? And that’s not including the idiots that think it’s seeded with mag-mines because it’s some pirate’s treasure and go in there and either get shot out of the sky, blown out of the sky, or just plain fucked up by the experiment. Hey, we said, in the interest of sharing, here have this research that we couldn’t get to work, have a ball, create a device that causes death and then mutation so violent that it can wipe out a planet cracker ship in less than twelve hours. And lets repeat the process by giving them access to our records on eugenesis.” He put his hand to his head. “I’ve had a very long week, gentlemen, you must excuse my temper.”

“I have one more question I have to ask,” Pike begun, “before we go down to dinner with the rest of them. Did you ask Kirk to give six of the survivors positions on the Enterprise?”

“I asked for Chapel.” Grimm answered, “the rest earned their places. It’s a long way from halfway past Saturn to earth on impulse engines, it gives people time to earn their stripes. Kirk’s naive and young but he rewards talent and dedication. He wouldn’t have any less under his command than he is willing to give himself.”

“He came off that ship half blind, bruised from scalp to toenails and in a sling. I think we can safely assess just how much Kirk gives.” Archer said bluntly. “I understand he went unto the Romulan ship with a phaser and a prayer to get you.” He looked at Pike. “Do you begrudge appointing Number One your aide?”

“I didn’t really have a choice.” Pike grumbled, “but she is amazing at what she does.”

“So, I think that settles it, we can’t deny the Last Unicorn survivors are remnants of the Eugenics experiments, but we’ll do our best to keep Section 31 off the hunt. We can keep a close eye on them.”

Grimm stood up, “I don’t think that’s fair.” He said, “they’re kids, earnest, and they’re not responsible for what some doctor did to them before they were born, if anyone is it’s Carmack, they used his research didn’t they?” He moved behind Pike to push his chair, “now gentlemen, although the conversation first with Dehner then you has completely soured my appetite,” the southern accent slid over his words like a shroud, “now we have a dinner to attend.”

“Do you think we’ll have a problem about the Soulcube?” Archer asked, creaking and making an oof sound as he climbed out of his chair.

“If the Klingons realise it’s a star destroyer, then yes, if the unitologists realise it’s the First Marker that their founder spoke of, then yes, and if some other religious lunatic misinterprets that picture as giving out souls instead of swallowing them, then yes, so I think that’s a resounding yes.”

“What is it?” Pike asked.

“It’s a key.” Grimm answered, “to all the bad things that your nightmares have nightmares about. It’s a weapon that replenishes the strength of it’s user at the same time it clears out a room, but at the cost of six human lives. It’s the last remnant of a race so technologically advanced that they invented the transporter and opened a gate to Hell, and in their earliest experiments found a way to make a small percentage of the population superhuman, as it were, and the other into mutated monsters determined to kill simply because they can. The Ancient greeks called it Pandora’s Box. I think that’s the best way to describe it.”

“The Klingons have a similar legend.” Archer said, in a low almost scared voice. “they call it the Hash’ak’gik. The engine of chaos and creation.”

\---

McCoy wishes that the wine and champagne that they served at that ridiculous dinner had been strong enough to get him drunk, although there were times he thinks thought downing a gallon of pure synthol wouldn’t do it. He showered quickly, pulling on an old tee and sweats, feeling uncomfortably naked even dressed, and then brought up the newsfeed with it’s incriminating hieroglyphics.

The pictures were startlingly clear.

Use us

There was that purplish sky and the dark red earth, that looked like ground terracotta and the dust that permeated everything. It had lifted and was dancing in the beams of the torches that the archaeologists had used. It had all been done in EVA, that much was clear, there was in places where the photographer’s breath steamed up his helmet.

The walls were covered in scratchings, marks carved into the hard red stone and covered in dust, he could imagine the hand that swept it away, causing it to rise about the small Praelenthor temple and dance in the beams. This was done at the last, he thought, touching the stone. It was a wonder they hadn’t found bodies, but perhaps even contained within the temple, bricked in, he guessed, the elements and time had torn them apart, to make yet more of the encroaching dust.

It was clearly the Soulcube in the hieroglyphs and it was funny how, nearly a century later, he still felt the weight of it in his hands, the strange warmth of the metal and the divots and creases of it’s construction, and even the flash of the blades.

Use us

A hundred years later and a dimension away he could still hear it.

The Praelenthor had given everything to create it, to undo their mistake but the cost was a star destroying weapon, six elders lost to the carvings and gleam, and...

He stopped himself there, throwing the PADD across the room hard enough that it shattered against the wall. Shaking his head he picked up the largest pieces that it wouldn’t pose a danger, super fast healing didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like a bitch when you stood on something with bare feet, leaving the rest for the roombas that kept the floor clean. Then he poured himself a glass of the fine bourbon he had treated himself to a bottle of the day before and got into bed.

\---

He was on the bridge, and was aware at least on some level that this was a dream, because he wore BDUs not his fleet uniform, but he maintained the wrist gauntlet that had been so popular on the planet crackers that kept all their information and projected the information he wanted in front of him, or across the screen of his helmet. But he was on the bridge of the Enterprise with it’s reflective surfaces and white light. Jim sat in the captain’s chair and he was wearing command gold, but when he had been captain he had only worn the black jersey. He was telling a story and the punchline seemed to be “and then she said, not without my mother.”

It was like a trigger had been pulled because the ship flashed red, the red circles and pentacles that had permeated Mars City at the end, then the ship went black. It happened in the same split second that had broken Mars City, and then Kirk’s head exploded and his skull rose, defying gravity, flames twisting around it.

Use us

He barely made it to the Head before he emptied his stomach, retching uselessly after he had parted with the fine dinner he had shared with the admiralty. He sat back for a moment to catch his breath.

“Here,” Kirk said handing him a beaker of water and a tissue to wipe his mouth, “bad dream?” McCoy rinsed out his mouth and then sipped the water to make sure it was going to stay down. It kind of surprised him by doing so, even as Kirk wiped down the bowl with practised motions, and then balling up the wipe, he dropped it into the bowl and flushed it. It carried everything away with a calming swishing noise and even the stink of it seemed to fade. “Good,” he said, sitting down on the floor next to McCoy, “I was hoping it wasn’t the fish.”

McCoy laughed and let Kirk mother him, wiping at the sweat on his forehead and around the back of his neck. They were sitting close enough that it was just easier to lean into him than pull back, or at least that’s what he told himself. There were lingering traces of his cologne and soap and even a hint of old sweat which wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. He wasn’t a Lost Soul, McCoy reminded himself, it was gone, locked away and it wasn’t ever going to get free again, and it wasn’t going to get Kirk, it was never going to get anyone again.

This was one of the easiest things about his relationship with Kirk, he just accepted the simplicty of it, he had his secrets and Jim had his, and if Jim sometimes crawled into bed with him for no reason other than because he didn’t mind. He asked no questions, he just was and he had simply had no idea just how rare and precious that made him.

McCoy hadn’t wanted a friend that day on the shuttle, he wanted to serve his time in the academy and do whatever the federation wanted, it was easier if he just did what he was told, if he didn’t argue or care. The last time he cared he had given blood to a starving kid because he had no water and the alternative was the kid died. It was funny looking at that skinny kid now and seeing the shining poster boy of Starfleet, their famous and wonderful Captain Kirk. He had been skin and bones, literally, eyes sunk in his head and face gaunt, he had lost his hair to ring worm and other skin conditions, but he had lived and Kirk didn’t complain when McCoy wrapped his arms about him and pulled him to his chest. He just swung one thigh over McCoy’s sitting legs so that he straddled him and softened into the arms. It was comfort, McCoy knew, and that was more than enough for both of them. “Stay,” McCoy whispered. And Kirk just rested against his neck, his whole body along McCoy’s and breathed him in like he was all that he needed to live, to keep him safe from the things the Soulcube held back.

Yet he could still hear it whispering in the darkness.

Use us


	5. The Marker

**Part Five**   
**The Marker**   
**Christopher Pike, Rear Admiral**

 

_Your body now, our body later, one body forever_   
_Death is only the beginning._

 

**Stardate 2258.81, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, California**

“That woman was a torturer in a past life.” Pike groused as Number One pushed his chair through the quad. “There are things that she does that are against the Romulan Convention for the treatment of prisoners.”

Number One distinctly did not laugh even if she smiled a little just at the exclamation. “Well perhaps, sir, if you did do all the required exercises at home then it would not be so torturous. I am sure that Dr McCoy would not have spoken of her so highly if she simply were one of the Orion slave trainers that you called her during your session.”

“You, madam,” Pike said looking over his shoulder at her, “are a traitor, you’re in cahoots with her, it’s all a cunning ploy.”

“Yes, sir,” she said calmly with just a hint of sarcasm, “this is a cunning plan to run away with your worldly belongings which amount to so much, a small house, a painting done by one of your students who crushed on you and your cat, who hates me.”

Pike lowered his shoulders, “I had my brain stem chewed on by an alien insect, don’t I warrant some sympathy?”

“No,” she answered calmly, “because sympathy does not improve your situation, your wallowing is hardly improving your health now is it, sir?”

“I hate you.” He said.

“So you tell me, sir, at least four times a day, in fact,” she looked at the sun to estimate the time, “I believe that this might be the sixth time today so we might be on for a new record, I also think that if you repeat it often enough to yourself that you might even believe it yourself.”

“Archer’s right about you,” he said, “you could take on the universe if you wanted, with Spock as your second in command, and it will be the most sarcastic empire ever known.”

“As you say, sir, although Commander Spock and I have been known to have rather interesting conversations.”

“Fascinating.” He said, “remarkable.” He added, “I do believe,” he finished mocking the three phrases that the two of them used most often. “I’m going to find out what Dr McCoy paid you to look after me, and then I’m going to spend double it to make you leave me alone for a day.”

Number One laughed and it was such a surprise he turned to look at her. She was devastating when she smiled. Everyone on the quad turned to look at her. She had refused a Starfleet Uniform although she had in the past two weeks tested out of the academy with remarkable scores, the highest of the Augments who chose to go into Starfleet, and then bullied the nurse assigned to him, and his personal assistant by being perfect at both their jobs until he just gave in and gave her the job.

She wore a red wool pinafore, with a thin black leather belt at her waist, and wore it over a white silk blouse with a high collar but her magnificent legs were bare apart from the boot she insisted on wearing. Pike knew, intellectually, that there were knives in them somewhere, probably at least four, but he wasn’t going to call her on it.

Number One was beautiful, in the way that horses or dangerous things were beautiful. She had long black hair that she wore strictly tied back in a pony tail that bounced and danced behind her, and a thick black fringe butted against her eyebrows. Her eyes were perhaps a little too small for a face too thin with a mouth too large, but they were set with a pair of cheekbones sharp enough that he could have used them to shave with, and a jawbone that perfectly echoed the shape of a man’s grip. Her voice was small, but it never lacked for command.

She was a mass of contradictions to form one perfect whole, but she had been built that way.

She pushed him to the small fleet apartment that had been given to his use as it was within walking distance to the medical centre and the building where the admiralty kept their offices, although she had brought him his cat, Kelvin, it didn’t really feel like home. She was also not one for small talk so unless he spoke to her she felt no need to fill the silence, which was remarkably soothing. He had lived alone for years and being with Number One was in many ways exactly the same.

She set his chair beside his favourite couch, letting him move himself because he always protested when she offered to help and then came back with a blanket to lay over his lap. This was new. “You make me feel like an old man.” She had, when he had strangely fallen asleep in one of their meetings - something he had started doing a lot- done exactly the same thing to Admiral Archer.

She tucked the blanket in. “You complained in counselling this morning that the sight of your legs offends as you as they remind you of what you consider your uselessness, therefore I thought it might be best to cover them. Now I shall fetch you some soup.” Arguing with her was like negotiating with the tide, you could talk till you were blue in the face but it wasn’t going to change her mind.

As she walked back in, her heels making a military click on the hard stone floor, the bowl held in front of her like a sceptre he asked her, “Who is Melissa Pearce?” The name had been the password for the encrypted files they had found from UAC years before. The bowl fell from her hands with a crash and she just stood there for a moment, hands still holding the phantom bowl, before she lowered her head and went back into the kitchen. The tomato soup looked like a blood stain.

He asked her again as she wiped up the mess, and she sighed. The porcelain looked very pale in her hands, jagged like fingers. “I shall fetch you more soup.” But as she walked back to the kitchen her pony tail had lost it’s imperial bounce, and he saw what Kirk had said about the imperfection that made her legs magnificent- that single mole on the back of her left knee.

\-------

It was common knowledge that every race had its fair share of religious fervour and humanity was no different. However it was easier to cope with religion and its fallout when it wasn’t camped out on your lawn. Pike wondered what the admiralty would think if he started shooting at them.

Earth religions were simple in comparison to some, there was the Carthodox, which had been created by the combination of three of the greatest theistic churches, catholicism, buddhism, and orthodoxy. They mostly kept to themselves and were devout and private people. Many carthodox followers served in star fleet and knew when to keep their big mouths shut. One of the principal rules of Carthodoxy was circumspection, if people didn’t bother you about their faith you didn’t bother them.

Pike had always secretly liked them, their rituals were soothing and their hymns were kind of pretty. They asked only that you remember that the universe kept a tally of what happened and you got what you deserved for what you did. A good person recieved good things and a bad person was punished, but as long as you repented and asked for forgiveness their afterlife was open to you.

On the other hand were the Unitologists.

Unitology was, in Pike’s opinion, a crock. He was open about most things, and ten years as a starship captain became problematic if you weren’t, you had your eyes peeled open and head locked in place so it wasn’t that he was anti religion, because he had run across ones stranger than unitology, but that the unitologists themselves all seemed, to put it bluntly, bat-shit insane.

This theory was pretty much accepted as law within the Fleet and it was standard protocol to refuse Unitologists who wished to enlist.

If the Carthodoxy was willing to live and let live, then the unitologists were the complete opposite. The considered anyone who did not follow their beliefs, which were more than a little crack pot, Pike thought, infidels and spent whatever time they had with them trying fervently to convert them. The Carthodox argued that they were irresponsible in that they allowed their members to progress within their church not by faith or hard work but by monetary donation, and had managed to prove that they actually required a subscription fee. Unitologists had proved more than willing to do anything to make that payment.

In all his time in Starfleet Pike had seen one execution for treason and it had been a Unitologist.

There was a group of them on his lawn, sitting there holding banners and waiting for security to remove them. It would have been less disturbing if they were trying to do something, like break into the house. They were talking amongst themselves happily and making it clear that when security threw them out for trespassing that security were in the wrong.

“Are they bothering you, sir?” Number One asked from behind him. She moved deliberately to make noise in those boots of hers that laced all the way to her knee caps. “I can have them removed.” He was getting good at translating her, and she had already clearly called for security.

“And give them what they want?” Pike said. She had recovered her composure from earlier but there was no hint she would answer his question, now or ever. “If we remove them we look like aggressors, which will be all over the news feeds and they claim the victory. If we ignore them however they won’t go away.”

She smiled, he would have said it was mischievous, if such words applied to her. “Then we must, of course, play them at their own game.” She turned, the tail of her hair swishing behind her as she went to the door. She walked up to them, PADD in hand and spoke to them. After a few moments as she tapped on the screen with the stylus they got up, pretty much en masse and left, looking remarkably perplexed. She was still smiling when she came in.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I simply explained that due to health reasons that you were unable to meet with them at the morning to hear any concerns that they had that you could see to in your position as rear admiral, but that I would be more than happy to make them an appointment. They didn’t take me up on the offer.”

He laughed and she smiled at him. “Their reasons for this protest were manifold, of course,” she continued, “but actually seeing you was not one of them, therefore by making it seem that it was possible it defeated them without the need for anguish or involving the press.”

“You gave them what it looked like they wanted, knowing full well that they didn’t.”

“Yes,” she said, “it is after all what I was trained for, to stand as a liaison between a king and his people.”

He chewed on her words. She had clearly chosen him as a king to serve. “Why not Kirk?” he asked, surprising himself. “I mean, he was the one who saved you.”

She knelt down beside him. “Kirk saved us not knowing what we were, but you offered us protection regardless, does that not require some recompense. Besides,” she swept an offending lock of hair from his forehead. “I like working with you. You are not as cantankerous as you would have me believe.” She turned, her hands on the handles of his chair to take him away from the window, “and Kirk does not need me. He is king of his domain and his people love him and he would die for them, gladly, but he will learn, I think, to live for them. You sacrificed yourself for faith in him, does that not also deserve acknowledgement. You believed Nero would kill you but used yourself as a distraction to disable his device. I have read all the debriefs, in some cases I even transcribed them, I do know what happened. You are a good man, Christopher Pike, and that alone deserves reward. I have nothing to give but my time and my aid as you recover from your considerable injuries. Would you have anything else of me?”

“Answers, perhaps.” He said. He didn’t like not knowing, it was tearing him in two. “Like who is Melissa Pearce, what did UAC do in Olduvai.”

“I can only tell you what I know.” She said. “Melissa Pearce was,” she stopped, licked her lips as she searched for the words. “Melissa Pearce was the beginning. She was the Perfect One, she was an accident.” She stopped again. “Melissa Pearce was the reason that the Augment procedure changed from Nuclear DNA to Mitochondrial DNA. She proved that given incentive that the mitochondria could be encouraged to produce more ATP than the body needed, this could then be transferred into other energy forms.”

Pike blinked. She couldn’t be saying what he thought he was.

“By the time I was created they had discovered twelve distinct manifestations of this energy, which they called Parasite Energy, the simplest of these was pyrokinesis, but also included static electricity, advanced healing and necrosis. Pearce could literally explode cells to a raw and primordial state. They intended to manipulate this energy into the Second Children but were unsuccessful.” She stopped. “We are the Third Children, built for empathy and not destruction, we were to be a bridge between humanity and the Second Children.” She paused again. “To my knowledge none of us have manifested these energies except healing.” She sat down on the chair, her hands folded in the red wool of her short skirt and those perfect legs bent. “Because mtDNA is matrilineal the males were considered useless for breeding purposes and were neutered at the genetic level after their base DNA was harvested.” Finally she lowered her eyes, her pale hazel eyes that looked through him sometimes to someone else underneath. Her fingers found the unicorn brooch at her breast, clutching around the silver almost protectively. “Melissa Pearce killed tens of thousands of people within a few days. She was a horror and a scientific fuck up,” the coarse language seeming uncomfortable on her tongue and in her mouth. “And they were so proud they gave me her name.”

“So McCoy gave you the name Robin Lefler.” It wasn’t really a question.

“He hated what she represented as much as I did, better to forget the name, to lose her and their mistake and choose something new, something that was not attached to her.”

“And what happened at Olduvai?” He needed to know this, if he was going to be McCoy’s handler. It was one thing being told that he was dangerous and damn near immortal, altered genetically, but he had no idea how, only that it had been at Olduvai.

“I don’t know.” She answered, “I know what happened before, I spent a long time hacking UAC records to know what I was. UAC was a branch of a larger underground corporation, it was the face of it. In many ways genetics was always going to be their main motivation but after they discovered the ark they shifted everything under that one umbrella. It gave them more freedom to move.” She sat so still and her voice was calm but there was something about the way she was poised on the edge of the chair, legs pressed together so tightly, fingers curled around the unicorn she wore on her breast. “They built Olduvai and used it for research that they did not dare do on Earth. No,” she stopped herself, “I am getting ahead of myself. The Ark revealed the ruins of the Martian people, the Praelenthor, and so UAC made agreements with certain universities, those well known for their work in genetics primarily, to send archaeological teams. That was to be the face of the Olduvai base, archaeology. The other experiments came later.”

She was staring not at him but the tiles on the floor. “The laws of Earth didn’t apply on Mars and they knew it. When the first dig collapsed Olduvai was shut down for nearly two years, in that time John Grimm was removed from Mars to earth, he was seven. He and his sister lived with their grandparents. She became a forensic archaeologist and returned to Mars, he joined the Marine corp which was at that time almost completely owned by private factions, including UAC.”

She had taken the brooch from her pinafore, rolling it around in her fingers, the silver flashing as she moved it. “When the archaeologists found humanoid remains they were genetically coded and they found what they called C-24. It was a mutagen at the mitochondrial level, it rewrote the mitochondria from 37 base pairs to 38, and created a new chromosomal pair, the C-24 it took it’s name for. The last records out showed a doctor intended to test the compound. Within two hours it was under full quarantine. I can only assume that the experiment went wrong.”

“Twenty hours after that the entrance to the Ark was sealed permanently, it’s location stripped from computer databases and Mars was considered written off.”

She paused. “I spent a long time looking at these records.” She said calmly. “After all my mitochondrial DNA came from Melissa Pearce and my patrilineal Nuclear DNA came from John Grimm.” She snorted as if something amused her. “I do not know the identity of my maternal donor, I suspect she was bought. I do know that I shared her with three others, including Christine Chapel and Benjamin Aurelian, but I have never manifested Parasite Energy, even when they attempted to force it from me. Nor do I have C-24, McCoy was careful in testing for that when I told him that he was my progenitor.” She stood up, the unicorn brooch she had been fussing with falling to the floor with a small clang, “does that answer your questions, Christopher?” She rarely used his name, she cursed more often than that. “Because I would really like to shower now, I feel as if something oily is on my skin.”

He agreed and she left the room, letting him run over what she had said. Melissa Pearce was a lucky scientific accident who had manifested so called psychic powers, what Psi-ops and Dehner wouldn’t give to learn that? and they had used similar research to create Olduvai. He felt like a heel for pressing her on the information. So when the day began to fade, early winter in San Francisco painting the sky chocolate white, he sat in the darkness and listened to the sound of water from the shower.

She wasn’t the only one who felt dirty after what she had said. He had picked up the unicorn, holding it in his hand and looking at the pin, the unicorn rearing and it’s hair flying. He held it long after the room had gone black, and the water still ran.


	6. The Ambassador

**Part Six**   
**Starfleet Academy, San Francisco**   
**James T Kirk, Capt USS Enterprise (Acting)**

 

_Embrace the Evolution._   
_Death is only the beginning._

 

Kirk had an odd sensation of weightless prescience. He knew something was coming. He could feel it like something under his skin, like a creature whose form was entirely different from his own moving within him, he could feel it like claws under his fingers and a general sense of both malaise and nausea. He walked across the academy quad with purpose to hide the fact that he wanted to collapse behind a bush and vomit, or transform himself into some sort of creature and wreak havoc on the city. He knew it was all in his head but he could feel it.

He had always trusted his instincts and this one was strange. He was to meet Bones at the hospital, just pick him up on the way to have lunch. He was sure they had planned this, but there was nothing in his PADD to confirm it which was weird because Bones always put it on his calender so it would ping and remind him, it was so easy to get distracted. There was so much to see, to learn, so much to distract, the universe was a vast and wondrous place amidst the terror and fear. It was so vast. For a second he wobbled in the sense of vertigo, like a great tide had buffeted him.

"Did you hear," one of the cadets said to his fellow, "the Vulcan had her baby, a girl," it was important but for some reason he didn't know why. "They called her T'beriis."

Someone was talking to him, tall and dark with black eyes like the wells of an event horizon. He had no idea what the man was saying but he was protracting the conversation most wittily, for the man was laughing at some joke Kirk made but all Kirk could hear was his ears ringing. He felt liquid surge into his mouth as a warning of vomit. He went to excuse himself but the thing within him, the creature that squatted in his skin moved in front of his eyes and the world went dark. "Captain," the man said, "Captain?" and then it went quiet.

\---

Someone was trying to put something in his mouth and he flailed, fighting it, trying to push the person away. "Captain," it was a woman's voice but he didn't know who they were talking to, "it's okay, it's just candy. You're okay, you're in Starfleet Medical, you passed out in the quad. Your blood sugar is very low, it's just an energy candy."

There were two men talking, but he could hear them from where he lay, mouth firm so she couldn't just slip the konva cube into his mouth. "Looks like Esparza takes the pool," one of them said, "there's always a reaction the first time, and we all thought he had the shitty end of the calendar."

"Doctor," the woman said, "he's waking up."

Kirk kept his eyes slitted as his entire body tensed preparing for fight or flight, whichever worked best for him at the moment it presented itself. He didn't trust medical facilities. He didn't trust doctors he didn't know. The doctor who approached him, his blue jersey wrinkled and coffee stained, had grey hair and narrow eyes. "Captain Kirk, I'm Philip Boyce," he said, "You're in Starfleet Medical's research department, you fainted in the quad, it's nothing worrying, just not enough food and sleep, we're going to let you go as soon as Dr McCoy comes to get you." He gave a conspiratorial nod as he spoke, "he threatened us with bodily harm if we let you go before then."

"I'm fine," Kirk said trying to pull himself up.

"No, just lie there for a couple of minutes," Boyce said, pushing him back down, "or you'll just pass out again."

"Who's Esparza?" Kirk growled, "what are you trying to slip me? Where the hell is McCoy?" His voice was getting louder as he continued.

"It's a peppermint ribbon," Boyce said showing him the packet, before slipping one of the candies into his own mouth. "Your blood sugar is very low, McCoy gave very specific instructions not to give you anything but candy, your medical file is full of allergies and we didn't have time to go through them. He'll be here in the half hour at the latest. So do you want one?"

Kirk debated it before shaking his head, "No Konva." His tongue felt like leather in his head, and his lips like they belonged to another animal, a carp perhaps, for all he could make them work.

"I'd fight like that if I thought someone was giving me konva." The nurse agreed as she poured out a cup of sugared water from the jug for him.

Konva was a medical superfood, it was the combination of a type of sweet potato, the konnyaku and the tulva root, having the benefits of both and the taste advantages of neither. A single cube of it, which was small enough to be mistaken for a candy on sight, had enough nutrients for a grown adult for three days. It also swelled in the stomach giving the sensation of fullness. However it had the texture of a mixture of gravel and mastic and tasted worse.

"The pool?" Kirk said as he took the cup from her, arranged into a semi reclined sitting position on the bed. It wasn't a biobed but an old fashioned gurney with no sheets and a leather surface that was easy to clean. This was Starfleet Medical Research, not the emergency ward.

"It's a thing," Boyce said pulling up a chair to sit beside him. "A captain thing, every captain reacts to their first mission in some way, some faint, some stop eating, some throw raging tantrums. It's the responsibility catching up. When you got back the powers that be had a pool to say when you'd go, a couple of credits to play, the winner takes all if you went on the day they picked. Esparza from Starfleet Intelligence took it."

Kirk tried to smile, but it wasn't happening yet. "And they say SI can't predict the future." He said glibly. Boyce barked out a laugh. "What's keeping McCoy?"

"He's getting a hair cut, against his better judgement he ended up taking an Andorian Tanti into the pediatrics ward and it spat in his hair, so he's having it cut out at the moment, he'll be along as soon as." Boyce said. "He was in the middle of it when that Aurelian person clone thing brought you in, over his shoulder."

"They prefer," the other doctor corrected, "to be called the Third Children."

"Actually," McCoy said from the door, "they prefer to be called by name."

When Boyce had said that McCoy had had to have his hair cut because some alien creature spat in it, possibly in panic - Kirk had been in the pediatrics ward here before, he understood panic - he thought it would be a trim. it hadn't been a trim. It still had some length, not as much as before, and certainly not that Old man of the Sea thing he had had going before, it was perhaps a fingerswidth longer than his scalp, just enough to twine fingers through and it made it look darker. It made him look more dangerous and virile. It was a good look and Boyce's nurse just clapped. "You see, Doctor," she said, "I told you there was a good looking man under that hair."

"Bones," Kirk said blaming the jelly lips and fumbling mouth on his recent misadventure, "you're hot."

"I've always been hot," McCoy said as he crossed the lab.

"Yes," Boyce said in a knowing fashion, like an elder dispensing wisdom, "but now you look it."

"Seriously Bones," Kirk agreed, "it was like your hotness was extinguished by really old man hair."

"Says the man who passed out on the quad." Bones said and went over, he looked at his padd and then helped Kirk sit up, jabbing him in the muscle between neck and shoulder with a hidden hypo.

"Goddammit, Bones, warn me, next time." Kirk said rubbing the skin, "what was that?"

"THat was a modified life signs tracker," Bones said bluntly, "designed for people working off world in very harsh conditions, it tracks little things like calorie intake, and registers it on your PADD, giving you recipe ideas to counter whatever it is that you're lacking." Put like that it didn't sound so bad. "And if you go long enough without eating again it will automatically let me know to put you on a liquid tulva diet." His grin was quite evil looking, Kirk was willing to admit. "And alerts you to remind you to eat every three hours."

"I've got one of those," Boyce agreed, "research." He shrugged like it explained anything at all.

"And you have an appointment this evening," with a vial of sedative, Kirk thought, "with Ambassador Eve in regards to actually talking to people about this stuff. If you won't talk to me." There was an implied threat with that as he offered Kirk his boots.

Although Ambassador Eve was based at the academy it was generally accepted by the cadets that she was a myth. She was the bogieman with which SI threatened it's unruly members. Nothing was known by her except that she was the head of Starfleet Intelligence; that she had been an ambassador and kept the title because it was how most of the Rim Worlds of the Alliance knew her, and that she possibly ate occasional members of her close staff.

What was a matter of record was this: she was human, she had the best target score for sharpshooting and sniping on record by some margin and that she had been the one to recruit McCoy to Starfleet. Everything else was a matter of some conjecture and embellished by the apocryphal legend that once she had caused a Klingon to piss himself in fear.

"What did I do?" Kirk asked, "I didn't eat the Vulcan baby, I promise."

McCoy raised an eyebrow as from the collar of his red jerkin a pair of eyes and a very small paw made itself known. This, clearly, was the Andorian Tanti. It was no bigger than his thumb and had very large very dark eyes and a small mouth that it licked a lot with it's little blue tongue. "Oh you're so cute," Kirk said, offering his finger to the creature.

"He'll have to do a lot more than spit in your hair," Bones said, proffering the boots again, "to get you out of it. Now, Acting Captain, to your quarters where you are going to spend the next six hours sleeping."

"It's a shame," Kirk sighed, nuzzling the nose of the creature that had crawled into his hand, "I don't even get dinner first."

"You've had three nutriboosters." Boyce chimed in, "you're good for a few hours."

\---

Kirk woke up warm and curled against Bones' thigh as Bones read to him about the wonderful adventures Wendy had with the Lost Boys, it was one of the books that Cain had read to the survivors on the Enterprise. ""To die," said Peter, "would be an awfully big adventure."" Bones cocked his eyebrow at him, "and you would wake up at just that line, wouldn't you."

"Was listening," Kirk protested with a yawn, "about pirates and space princesses and croc'diles."

"Really?" McCoy laughed, "Go get a shower, kid, Eve will be here soon enough."

Kirk groaned and rolled out of bed, there was a selection of cold meats, cheese and dried fruit with a few different types of bread and on his way he lifted a slice of Rye bread and a slice of ham, rolling them both up into his mouth.

She was there when Kirk disembarked the shower. He hadn't realised how gritty he felt, or how ravenous, preparing to eat the entire platter that McCoy had left out for him. He stepped out of the bathroom in his towel, prepared to explain this to McCoy when he saw her sitting there.

Ambassador Eve liked to defy expectations and perhaps the best way she did this was the way that she looked. She appeared, although he knew it couldn't be true, to be the same age as Kirk, with close cropped blonde hair and large wide blue eyes. She wore the bell bottomed pants and black undershirt common to serving members of starfleet but with a jacket, instead of a jersey, with all her medals and things pinned on the breast. The cuffs had a plethora of golden rank braids.

She was gorgeous but in a hard way, like she had been carved out of crystal and moved through the careful manipulation of mechanisms he could neither perceive or understand. Although she looked perhaps twenty years too young to hold the position she did everything in her manner suggested she had earned it. She was also eating a piece of very ripe appearing blue cheese on a cracker covered with poppy seeds, like she wasn't eating Kirk's dinner when he had just fainted from not eating. A sliver of a smile in her eyes and mouth dared him to say something about it. Kirk made the decision there and then he wasn't that keen on blue cheese anyway.

"Kid, this is Eve Baer." Bones said from the door, holding two open beer bottles in one hand and a glass of fruit juice in the other. The tanti was still in his collar, but now was feasting on a grape nearly the size he was. "Earth Home Ambassador to the Klingons for two years and current head of Starfleet Intelligence."

"Aya," he said, clearly using a pet-name for her, "this is James T Kirk, Acting Captain of the Starfleet Enterprise, and well, saviour of the entire known world." He offered Eve the other beer, handing Kirk the fruit juice. "He had his firsty breakdown today."

"Good for you, kid," she had the same tone and same syrupy accent as Bones did. "You lasted nearly three whole weeks, did Leo tell you why he wanted me to talk to you."

"Because you made a klingon piss himself in fear and he thought you might get me into the habit of eating regularly enough that I don't pass out in front of everyone still wearing cadet reds."

She laughed, cast her head back and genuinely laughed, it was a surprisingly warm sound, and he had thought her beautiful in stillness, in laughter she was a goddess. "Well, there is that." She agreed, "But it's more that I saved a city once, and my come down was, well, epic." Her smile was more brittle this time, "It wasn't a big city, it was big for the world it was on, and it was a miracle that I saved it, but it wasn't a simple thing to cope with that, suddenly there were millions of people who were alive because of me. I think you know what that's like."

"I,"

"Bullshit, bluff and bravado." She agreed, toasting him with her beer bottle, "you do what you have to do, and you cope, and then when the time comes to deal you pass out on the quad because you've been keeping yourself so busy you to not think about it you forgot to do things like, well, eat." She seemed perfectly smug, content that she was right, and to make matters worse she was. "You followed orders, Pike told you to go get him, and faced with the alternative that you'd have to run the ship on your own- you did," she saluted him with the beer bottle again before draining half of it in a single swallow. "Then when it became clear you would have to be in charge you did what you thought Pike would have done in your place, am i right?" He nodded slowly even as Bones piled the plate in front of him.

"That's the thing about saving the world, kid," she said, "you don't save the world or the universe, you do what you've gotta to get the hell out of it, and come out the other end a hero." At that she drained the beer bottle and placed on the table with a loud clink, "or in my place you shoot like hell anything that appears to be getting in the way of running away. So then you feel like a fraud because all these people think you're the dog's bollocks," Kirk blinked, he'd never heard that term before - but he liked it, "and you're, um no, I did what needed to be done. You see that's what Starfleet can't teach you, hence the Firsties."

"You sound like you've been there."

"Honey," she corrected, "I've been there, done that, bought the teeshirt and wore it until it fell to rags, and then used it to clean the windows." She reached over and took Bones' beer out of his hand. "And then to wipe up where the Klingon pissed himself."

"How did you do that?" he asked, around a mouthful of grapes and cheese.

"Do you know what an epilator is?" she said archly, "neither did he, although since then they've been placed on the international list of items for terrorism, and it's standard issue for women in Starfleet, you see," and then as they ate she regaled them with a rather witty tale involving short trousers, Klingon women, a bet about pain tolerance and a basic beauty regime that had all of them laughing. And looking at the beautiful woman sat at the small table in their tiny cadet's quarters, Kirk knew someone understood what he was going through - even if she was hogging the blue cheese.


End file.
